Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth interview

This is an interview with the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth,
October 27 and 28, 1988, at Greater New Light Baptist Church in
Cincinnati , Ohio . This interview was conducted by Andrew Manis.
INTERVIEWER : Reverend Shuttlesworth , picking up on some of the
early background of your life , we have talked about your
relationships with your stepfather and with your mother. I
wonder if you can give me some insight into your relationships
with your brothers and sisters. Generally, which brothers or
sisters you were close to , how they may have i~fluenced your life
and anecdotes that you remember about growing up with your
brothers and sisters. Mischievous kinds of things. Just
basically what you remember about growing up with your brothers
and sisters .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, you must remember we were raised
out in the country, it was called then, although it is right on
the edge of Birmingham now . We did farming . My stepfather had
me and my brother who was five years younger, Eugene, and my
cousin Tom (my mother ' s sister ' s son who stayed with us quite a
bit) to get up on the road many times 5 : 00 o'clock in the morning
and go to the field which is now at the edge of Birmingham in
Homewood . I used to throw papers. I carried papers during the
afternoon until I got a bicycle. Then I rode the bicycle. My
relationship with my brothers and sisters was I guess you would
call it hectic but normal in those days -- we were playful. We
had fights as brothers and sisters always did. We were
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disciplined . I was qui te mischievous. I found things to get
into . I wasn't mean and evil just devilish. I remember and
you ' re tal king about mischi evous things , I used have them give me
their meat skins . We had to come to the table and eat together.
That was one thing my stepfather who I consider to be quite mean,
(he wasn ' t re ligious at all -- as I've think I've said) but we
always ate together. I ' d have them pass under the edge of the
table meat ski ns . I ' d have a big pile of meat in my plate . My
stepfather used to get on me and curse me out about that . I
would encourage him by saying "This Sister or Eul a Mae or so and
so broke the record, meaning that they would try to give me their
meat." I remember my stepfather would always -- I don ' t see why
we didn ' t have indigestion and all of our digesti ve systems all
messed up when we were kids because he would always find the
ideal time to fuss , at eating time. I remember his index finger
was k i nd of curved and he ' d be pointing at you but he would be
pointing over here. Papa would always help the plates and he had
no compunction using curse words. He woul d always tell my sister
to fix her plate that she woul d get the wing of the chicken
"because that little heifer likes to fly " - - run from her mamma
when get ting beaten and everythi ng . So he ' d give her the wing. I
liked the drumstick . He would call me -- my eyes were quite
clear at this time and his favorite word for me was "whi te eyed
hound . " He was always making some threat , fixing my plate now,
"You white-eyed hound, I 'm going to beat the hell out of him" or
"I got hell up my sleeve for you ." Eugene , my brother , he a l ways
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had a large head . His head was large for his body . He would
always call him a "big head hound." INTERVIEWER: This was just
playful?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, he'd be meaning it. You couldn ' t
say anything back to him. I wish I could have grabbed him. But
we were teenagers . He married my mamma when I was about two. My
older sister and I, Cleola whole, but the rest of them were his
children , Eugene and the other seven . We were all raised up
together. But anything he had to say would come out at the
table. That was our usual bill of fare.
INTERVIEWER: This was generally the one place the whole family
was together where it would come out?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH : Oh , yeah. I remember my mother was the
slowest cook in the world. Many times when we would come in from
the fields , she would have to cook in the afternoon . She never
did know how to rush cooking . I guess we were hungry, which made
it seem slower . She'd have to make a fire in the coal or wood
stove . We'd have to pick up coal some time. That was our style.
As kids we were playful. We would always be picking at each
other and play with other kids who would come. I remember my
sister (I was home the other day and I was teasing her about it)
we remember things we did way back there sixty years ago, a long
time ago. My sister, for instance , -- Eugene would like to play
with the dog a lot . He has a scar on his head now. He was
playing with the dog and slid off the end of t he step and cut his
head on a rock . Whenever he'd see blood he'd go crazy anyway.
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We tease him about that and get in a fight many times teasing him
about such incidents. My grandmother (my mother ' s father's
mother) stayed with us for a while or either she would corne to
see us. I never saw my grandmother ' s legs because they wore long
dresses . We loved her but we were afraid of her. I think in
modern times grandparents were -- I mean if grandparents were at
the horne it would be a lot more stabilizing effort. My sister,
we were sitt ing out in the back yard. They made us keep the yard
clean. We had chickens and things. We'd have to sweep the yard
some times. Eugene had come out of the house and was asking my
sister about the broom. And I remember grandmamma sitting there
with her legs crossed in the rocking chair. Sitting outdoors.
Gene had asked sister for the broom two or three times. nSister,
where is the broom? " Sister just like a playful kid, " I ate it
up." Grandmamma never sai d anything. Eugene asked her two or
three more times. "Sister, I said, where is the broom?" She
enjoyed him not knowing where it was. "I ate it up . It After
while grandmamma said , "If you et it up , you better sheeet it
out." She had an old hickory , and kept a stick in her mouth,
dipped snuff. She repeated, "I said , if you ate it up , you
better sheeet it out ." Sister immediately came up with the
broom , just that quick. I remember so many things . One thing we
were always conscious of my stepfather being quite jealous of my
mother. We would note incidents about his fighting .
INTERVIEWER: Jealous of other men or?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I just think it was because she was a
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younger woman. This is honest, I tried to go back and search my
own mind and I never saw one thing of evil import on my mother's
side . I would say that to anybody. You would too, but I l ooked
in my mind and searched. I had never seen one thing bad, but
mamma didn't have much. We was on welfare. Papa always made
liquor. We'd have plenty of people come around to buy liquor.
But I never saw any incidents -- there were always men and women
-- quite a bit, not always, but they would come by, like people
got their pay in the mines, they would come over weekends.
Several of them would come and drink and buy liquor. I only
remember my stepfather going to church with us twice in my life.
Once the preacher came and I believe that the two times that papa
finally went to church he was in jail e ither the next week or two
weeks on the liquor thing. He didn't care anything about church.
INTERVIEWER: Getting back to that jealousy with your mother .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, I think jealousy was a strong
word. She was much younger woman than he was . My mother was 21
years older than I was. He died when I was my older childhood
when I was 18 . She would have been only in thirties. She never
did have a lot of clothes. She was always faithful. They had
the beginnings of what they called adult education , night school,
which was right up around the curve from our house, less than a
block . She would go to night school. As I recall , he wouldn't
go to school but he would be gone just about the time for her to
get out. I remember he had a T Model Ford that carne to a point
at the end. He had a fender that was kinda loose and squeaked.
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During the time when we were young he had some skid poles about
the size of my little finger in the back and I never knew what
they were for until he and mamma were in a verbal and physical
battle one day, and she asked him what he was going to do with
those poles. Then she said "Oh, you got 'em to whip my ass with
them?" He was short winded , and when they would get in a fight
or tussle he couldn ' t trust her long because he was very short
with her. His hands were twice as big as mine . He had very big
hands . He would slap her. He ' d make her mad as fire. He'd have
to either hold her or get away from her. Because she would
overcome him. I remember one time he hauled off and slapped her
on the porch and ran down the steps and went across the yard
about 30 feet and stepped up into the chi cken fence. I t was
quite high. He had d i fficulty- -he was getting old . Mamma was
climbing and hitting him so bad clawing him. He was about out of
wind. He had to stand and hold one of the posts in the chicken
yard . He was trying to get mamma off of him. She was clawing
allover his head. They were both using language , you know. So
he remembers that he looked down from our back yard and he could
see across the street . He saw a lady narned Maggie Tolbert. He
said, "Look at Maggie!" He was trying t o shame her for
continuing to fight. Mamma said , "Damn Maggie , you slapped me,
you SOB. I 'm going to get you." We remember all of that . We
had a kind of a boisterous life. It was not a thing of love in
the sense of talking very kind to your children and never said
stern words. We had to work. I had to wash clothes with the
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girls and other things. I had t o get them clean. Looked to me
like they were c l ean but mamma found more dirt. Mamma had an
unus ual way of s l apping me right in t he eye. I would see a ll the
stars you 1r e suppose to see at night in the day time. She was
very stern. She was religious . She saw to it that we went to
church. Never a questi on of "are you going to chur ch" like these
people ask their children now . The biggest probl em was getting
up and getting our c lothes on on time.
INTERVIEWER: Do you ever feel any inconsistency between the more
than occasi onal violence that happened between your parents with
your mothe r dishing out a good bit of it as well, inconsistency
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: We ll she would attack him. I did
understand later on that he had one of h i s buddies down there .
His buddy's sister lived with him and he was messin ' a r ound with
her but I was t oo young to understand all that then. Named
Louise, and mamma would be , she might start fuss ing at him about
tha t o r something. This was one occas ion , one problem that they
had, as I remember.
INTERVIEWER: Do you have a sense of an i ncons i stency that you
may have felt to the extent where the l anguage that was being
used during these arguments and fights and the occasi onal
violence didn ' t match up with the insistence on church going?
Did that seem hypocritical to you?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Not then it didn't. Because that was a
way o f life .
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INTERVIEWER: How do you feel about it now and how have your
feelings changed about that over the years , if they have.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: We accepted that as children. We had
to. It was a way of life. I guess I certainly appreciate her
being churchy. I've been churchy all my life. She brought me up
that way. I saw her as being more persecuted than anything
else. Normally they would be at it, talking l oud o r something
when we were kids. Being there sometimes in the day, it wasn't
every day -- don't get that impression. But this was a general
part of periodically having to say and enough to say that we
didn't have a life removed from vulgar words, or vain words. Our
life included that. Of course as children we stood out of the
way. I remember, let ' s see, when I was -- I always wanted to -­I
had in my mind I wanted to do something to him because he would
beat mamma. And so when I got up and was a teenager about 14, I
remember my oldest sister [Cleola] and Eugene decided to wanted
work out a plan to beat his butt one day. He was more aware of
it than we were. I remember before, what really brought this
into my mind was that my mother had one eye for a very long time.
I think it was in the thirties while they were fighting. She had
a broom handle. Now I saw this. He had a chair. He'd use it.
He wouldn't throw a chair but he had the chair. She hit him.
I'm l ooking at this. The broom slithered and that thing went in
her eye. I am l ooking at this as a boy . Course she accused him
of knocking her eye out. They were fighting. That chair poked
in her eye and she lost her eye. We always said he was the cause
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of this . We a lways wanted to find a way, and I got o l d enough,
we called it "sassing" then . I said we'd get back at him but I
stayed out of his way . I guess over a period of months--this was
after mamma had been in the hospital and got her eye fixed--she
just had one eye after that. We decided we were going to grab
him. My sister had a broom. [Laughs.] My sister always had a
broom. And Eugene -- I was in the kitchen doing the cooking or
something. Papa come in and I deliberately said something to get
him mad at me. Sister and Gene were going to come up behind on
the other side and grab him. We were all going to grab him
together . I don't know what we were going to do. But the
strategy was that we were going to grab him, but you got to stay
out of the way of him because he could knock you across this
room. I was cooking and I said "Yeah, you knocked mamma 's eye
out . You ain ' t gonna get away with it!" "Whatcha gonna do about
it?" "We 're gonna do something ." Youngsters have no idea of
what they are saying. I was indicating , but I was more verbal I
guess than I wanted to be but I was really talking so I could
claim his attention while sister and Gene came up from behind.
Then I was going to directly confront him. The old man was very
conscious of what was going on. It is amazing how young people
think older people don't understand their minds . They don ' t have
to be educated . But they can understand you far more than you
understand yourself. So we were in the kitchen and dining room.
There was a hall. So you could circle around the porch, go back
through the hall, come back around through the dining room to the
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kitchen and make a little circle. So sister was going to be
coming through the dining room and Gene was coming from the porch
into the kitchen where he and I was. I remember well . . . but
there was never any physical contact , but it was intended . So I
told him, "Yeah, the fact is you don ' t like me." He said some
word . I don't know what he said . He was quite alert. So
finally I got right up in his face and sister was coming out of
the dini ng room with the broom and Eugene was coming in the back
door. Papa waited until we got dead right there, "What the hell
you going to do with that broom?" Sister went that way and
Eugene went that way , and there I was standing. I didn ' t say any
more to hi m.
INTERVIEWER: That was the end of it?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: That was the end of it but we had
intended to confront him and grab him and really beat his butt
that day.
INTERVIEWER: One last question about your parents relationship
and then I want to move onto another subject. You said you
recall a good bit of the turmoil between them . Can you remember
moments of tenderness between them?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Oh yes, yes , that old man was very fond
of mamma. I don ' t remember him buying her many clothes. I don ' t
think mamma at anyone time had more than two dresses. I
remember during arguments I remember her saying "you want me to
stay naked . " I remember them sitting there talking and carrying
on. They never did play over us sexually. But I remember he
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would pass by mamma and grab her breast . He'd call that his
jelly couch. I don't know what he meant by that. But I think
they were close. She respected him -- she called him Mr .
Shuttlesworth. She never did call him Bill or William. They
would sit down and talk and quite often in front of us about
various things. But we kids were taught at that time to fear
their parents. It wasn ' t a matter that we could sit up and talk
with them about everything like kids do now. When other adults
come around, what conversation we hear we got slip and hear or
something like that. When grown folks talked , you were not to be
seen . Basically that is the way I was raised up.
INTERVIEWER: What would you consider to be the two or three most
important events that happened to your family as a whole during
your boyhood , in adolescence that had a lasting effect?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I always remember my mother. And its
because I am old enough to see it now in a better light, but I
think a lot of what I got basically from my mother. She always
took and made much out of -- she was never downcast. She never
had a whole lot of money. Yet I would see papa, during his
lifetime, people could count out $200 or $300 on the bed. He
sold liquor you know. I donlt remember him doing a whole lot
with it. I remember riding my bicycle to Bessemer for years to
pay $5.00 on a $150.00 held borrowed to do something around the
house. That was for years . That man while he was alive I
think for five years. When he died I asked the man what the
balance of it was. He could have paid it out . I think the man
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told me I could give $5 . 00 more and he gave me the note. Am I
getting off your question?
INTERVI EWER: I am looking for things that . .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I remember my mother , we had to walk
across the mountain maybe four or five miles to the commissary .
In the early days he worked in the mine . The commissary store
was where we would get our groceries. On the other side there
was a good wil l store wh i ch was a l ittle closer but we didn ' t go
there a lot. I remember mamma had a $20.00 bill . This always
stuck in my mind. On the way to get something she suddenly began
looking for it and couldn ' t find it. This was after papa died or
just before . I l ooked for her to begin crying because $20 . 00 at
that time was l ike a thou sand now. She looked and looked, turned
things i nside out , al l over her clothes and purse. Then she
said, "Well , let ' s go . " I finally said "Don ' t you feel like
cryi ng." She said, "Well, son, you can ' t mi ss what you never
had . " We turned around and went back home . It was one of those
lean t imes.
INTERVIEWER: As you look back over your entire first eighteen
years up t hrough high school, could you i sol ate events that you
think had the most infl uence on y ou and what you became as an
adult?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Church.
INTERVIEWER : I am talking about events , particular things that
happened . I know of your mother ' s influence through the church ,
maybe some incidents that illustrate how they influenced you.
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REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I ' d have to say I am not sure I had a
lot of spect acular events i n my life . I had a lot of thi ngs that
happened . Not hing I recall ?
INTERVIEWER : The kind of events that you think, as you l ook back
on them now , shaped your personality, made you different?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well , I was always very apt. Although
my mot her was endearing , it was in a way that was coercive. I
could tell she appreciat ed what I was , but she knew that if she
didn ' t control my devilish tendencies, I could be a rat and turn
the wr ong way . She was dear to me and yet quite violent in many
ways. If I got a whippin' outside I'd have to get another one
when I came home. And I used to get quite a few in school during
the day . But I guess my life was one where more than something
knocking me into , more than something happening to me , and I got
this philosophy from it -- I accepted I know I always wanted
to be either a doctor or a preacher ever since I can remember .
In my lifetime I wanted to be either a doctor or a preacher . I
guess I remember all the adul ts woul d be sayi ng to me , "Boy, you
are goi ng t o real l y make something out o f yourself . II That was a
general thing . Everybody could see something in me. I remember
when I went to school, in the seventh grade I had a photostatic
memory . I read a fifteen - page oration . I think I read it three
times and then recited i t, just like that. So , people took a
special i nterest in me , al t hough I was ter ribly bad. I was
devili sh ; I would pick at people . The teacher stood me in the
corner one day for talking . While I was there , all the kids were
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watching , I ran the clock up . She turned around and I 'm looking
in the corner. I ran the clock up. I d i d it too much . So that
she rang the bell for our d i smissal and it just happened that
another school teacher came up about the time we was getting
ready to get out . He sai d "what's wrong?" She said, "it ' s time ,
the clock shows its time to go home." It was 45 minutes before
time. She had to call everybody back in and I must have gotten
at l east three whippings because she wanted to make me -- she
would t ake me back to the cloak room. Teachers would make you
take your underwear down. Every time I would come out I would
smile . I wasn ' t gonna let ' em see me crying. So I would come
out smiling. The teacher would say "Oh , its funny to you . Let ' s
go back. " So we took at least six trips to that cloak room .
After while the teacher just got red. Whippin' me. But the
strap was taking its toll , some of the licks hitting in the same
place. On the last trip I thought I'd do something , so I put
spit on my eyes so she would think I was crying . I was burning
behind but wasn't gonna l et them gals see . That ' s the kind of
the person. Not mean but just provocative . It had to come out
some way. As I look at my life now, when I was in Birmingham ,
that was the time I could look go to the telephone book and dial
a hundred numbers without looking in the te l ephone book . I had a
photostatic memory. I could memorize things . I could remember.
I had t his ability even in mass meetings - - I'd just take this
step - I didn ' t have to take steps one through ten. I can see
how God was preparing me . But I had no special incident of my
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mother or even in church that would make me think that this fixed
my life towards that -- although I have always honored and
revered the idea of God -- I had, as I said, my mother ' s good
influence . Our teacher, they had classes together in the same in
the room in the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth grade. First
through sixth grade. Professor Ramsey was a good influence. But
no more momentous , no cataclysmic effort that caused me to be
either religious or not .
INTERVIEWER: You've mentioned to me in the past concerning your
conversion or joining the church, that it was not a dramatic kind
of emotional experience in that you kind of grew into it having
been in church all your life . Still there must have been some
kind of feelings or thoughts that led you to decide now is the
time to join the church. Can you describe
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I think there was more in being in a
religious climate and emotional atmosphere . You must remember
there was revival in the country back then. It was an all
engrossing type thing . Even though you go to the field to work
in the day time, you think about revival at night .
INTERVIEWER: So your decision to, do you call it joining the
church, or being converted or is it both the same?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: It could be both .
INTERVIEWER: What was the terminology you used then? You may
have different ways of talking about it now since you
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well , it just came in there. We had
morning service every once in a while. Way back there. When I
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decided, I just thought it was the thing to do . Nothing earth
shaki ng , no knock down, drag out . I went up and gave the
preacher my hand.
INTERVIEWER : This was during the reviva l ?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Oh yeah. At the same time I wasn ' t
turned off by a lack of spiritual meetings that had people doing
earthly things. For instance , right down below us were the
sanct i fied folks. They had beating drums and everything and
sometimes we would go . We lived right -- well, we could sit on
our porch and hear that . I remember once they had a sanctified
meeting down there and there was a two-story building. The white
man who owned the buil d i ng in that area , the revenue man came out
there one day and threw out about fift y drums of liquor . They
were down there beati ng the drums and a l l that stuff under that.
Even that didn ' t turn me off . Though I ' ve seen people who
claimed to be very hol y, very righteous, and I would see about
them that they were utterly human. I would see things about them
that we r e ug l y involving sex and other t hings. But I never was
turned off. That didn ' t really make me irreligious because I saw
those t h i ngs.
INTERVIEWER: Why do you think you responded to it that way?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH : That I didn ' t turn off?
INTERVI EWER: Right.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Number one , it wasn ' t my privilege to be
turned off . I had to go to church . But I wanted to believe .
I ' ve never had a rebellious attitude about either goi ng to church
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or not going to church. It was a thing I wanted to do. Being as
apt as I was , it was a thi ng that fit into my nature , my
character, my disposi tion . Though I was devilish, I was very
religious. Even when I was young . I would lead devotions, sing
solos, do everything. Recite. I always learned my recitation
from things.
INTERVIEWER: You were baptized in the AME Church?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I was sprinkled. Christened .
INTERVIEWER: As an infant?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Not as an infant , no. Let ' s see , how
old was I . I am trying to remember. I might have forgotten. But
I can say I was raised up . It seems to me that I was real small
when they sprinkled water on me .
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember when this revival was , about how
old you were when you joined the church in that revival meeting?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I couldn't have been over eight.
INTERVIEWER: What happened in your church after you joined the
church? Did they put you in a special kind of class or anything
for new converts?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No , but you must remember I was always
encouraged and after I joined the church some of the people I
remember l ike Mrs. Hines who always led the devotion and I always
thought she was such a saintly person. There was her daughter
named Jane Emma who was older than I was. She was in love with
some preacher. Jane Emma must have had about ten kids and hasn ' t
got married yet until this day . I could understand the
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contradictions but it never affected me from even revering her
mother. There were always men and women said to me that God had
a special job for me . You are smart enough to stay out of
trouble. I was always encouraged. I never was encouraged to do
wrong.
INTERVIEWER: Did the adults who were encouraging you in this
way , did they do this to all the kids?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH : I think generally so but I always , as I
recal l , they would find a way to be encouraging where I was
concerned.
INTERVIEWER: Let me ask this. The AME Church has a long
tradition of encouraging its members to work hard and to be
educated and try to advance themselves. Do you think growing up
in the AME CHurch had any particular influence on you as, say if
you had grown up in some other church , such as Baptist as you
became later? Did the AME background have any particular,
special influence on you do you think?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I guess the reading of hymns , the AME
emphasized hymns more than other churches.
INTERVIEWER: Did the mi nisters or the Sunday School teachers
talk about Richard Allen?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Not a whole lot. We would get that
generall y but I am not aware of any special sermon on Richard
Allen or the great Methodist ministers. Maybe there would be a
general AME conference to which I would go once in a while. My
mother was not a great church woman to the point that she went to
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all these things and I woul dn ' t have to be there either. She
would go to her church but I don ' t remember her too much going to
conferences. Course t hat was at the time that the famous Bi shop
E. Ward Nichols [Indistinguishable.] would hold things at our
church j ust like at o t her s and we would get some of the
historical perspecti ve but I wasn't drilled in the respect
"Here ' s a b i shop that you should hear him ... and thi s and
that." No , I was j ust -- and I say , if you ' re asking me , except
for the ritual that the Methodist had -- they were litanious
[ l iturgical] and I guess to that extent I was better off than if
I had been brought up in the Baptist church where it is more
loose .
INTERVI EWER : Did you ever have a sense of pri de i n the sense of
being AME since AMEs were the first independent Black
denomination?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: NO, that did not come into my being. I
knew we were different f r om the Baptist church and we woul d go to
the Baptist chur ch on Sundays when we were not engaged a t o u r
church. I think we were second and fourth [Sundays ) ; the Baptist
[had servi ces] on the f i rst and third, I believe . In the Baptist
church , I think I menti oned to you a man named Jack Hawthor ne,
who was a deacon down there , r ea l tall and l anky. Hi s feet were
excepti onal ly long for h i s body. He was a very nice person , very
encour aging to younger people . I would go down there just to
hear h i m pray . He was t alking to the Lord and he would say "Do
thou have mercy. " I liked his devotions. But we knew that they
19
were a different church than ours but we were all were the same
community except they were Baptists and we were Methodists. They
baptized; we sprinkled.
INTERVIEWER: What stands out in your memory about your high
school years?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: We would ride the bus. We started out
going to Rosedale I think and then they transferred us for a few
months to Wenonah, then we went back to Rosedale where I finally
graduated. Well, I always liked football. I COUldn't catch a
baseball so I never cared too much for baseball. I remember
liking football and I wanted to get on the team . One boy , light
skinned boy, fell and broke his arm. I can see his arm -- just
contorted. The only way I got a uniform was when he took his
off. I picked it up and I got on the team that way. In high
school, I was very apt . It was not difficult for me to see
through things . To read and discern from the page almost
instantaneously. I don't remember having to sit down and ponder
over many lessons until I got in college. Even there , the
teachers , Professor B. M. Montgomery at Rosedale were very
differential. When I say differential I mean about the way they
encouraged me. Not make any special privilege for me . I would
always be cautioned about being mischievous or talkative. I was
that way all my life . I remember, talking about high school,
related to the system we lived in . The bus driver killed a man .
Not in front of us. I remember he had some white person go down
and say he was a good nigger and he got off. I guess you store
20
all these things in your mind. But there was nothing you could
do about it. It was during the high school years that I was put
in jail . They got us for the distillery. But we weren 't
distilling . I think the people up above us named Satersfield
It was during that time when Newton Hubbard came out and forced
us to tell him where we hid the -- papa had died then. I r emember
that and so it was not too long since. So I had to be eighteen.
No, let's see, he died when I graduated . Yeah, that's right, I
was eighteen or nineteen, going toward nineteen. And I married
when I was nineteen. So we got there and my lawyer, Adams , got
us probation. Eugene was judged a juvenile. He never did have
to go to court. But I was put on probation . I remember the word
"probation ," listening t o Adams talk . I remember also soon after
I got into the Civil Rights thing the Ku Klux Klan looked at my
record and found out I had been a -- what do you call it -- a
bootlegger. Had a thing out, you know. It didn't make any
difference but I never tried to deny it in my life. We weren't
caught running no liquor or nothing, just . .
INTERVIEWER: You mentioned getting on the football team. Did
you get to play much?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: After that, yes.
INTERVIEWER: What position did you play?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I played left tackle I believe it was.
I wasn ' t afraid to tackl e anybody. I was very swift.
INTERVIEWER: How many years did you play?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Maybe two. I don't remember the last
21
year . Might have. But I wouldn't have been in it ..
INTERVIEWER: Other than going to school and the jobs you had,
you had high school jobs and you mentioned riding your bicycle.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Not anything spectacular until I met my
wife .
INTERVIEWER: Looking back over both your boyhood and your
adolescence , can you think of any outstanding incidents in which
you had encounters with white people? Adults or young people.
And were they positive or negative encounters?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I didn't have too much contact with
white people . The white people I encountered were the men that,
when the superintendent of education came out, supervisor, they
cal l ed him then. One time we went over to work these people's
lawn in Shades Mountain. We had to regard white people in a
different light. We had to regard their status different. I
never felt the sense that I was any less than they were but I
knew that society demanded that I be different. I think it was
in the courts the two or three times I went and I went to Joe's
trial -- this bus driver. I saw the situation in which it was
very good if you were white in our system. Although I wasn't
inflamed as such. I knew that the white people if they wanted
you to have a job, the white people could recommend that you
could get a job . For just a very little while after I got my
bicycle I was a drugstore delivery boy in Edgewood for a while
not too far from Oxmoor . I would go to white people ' s homes but
I've never had a whole lot of intimate contact, as I recall now,
22
with white people. Especially white younger boys and girls.
Except I might work in yards or help clean up or something. I
knew people who worked with white people.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember ever having any conversations with
a white adult or a white person your age? Even short exchanges
of conversation?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: You mean when I was young?
INTERVIEWER: Any time between boyhood and high school
graduation.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Not too much because even then Negro
teams didn't play white schools at that time. I am trying to
recall -- there just wasn't a whole lot of contact with white
children or white boys and girls.
INTERVIEWER: I don't suppose anyone could have done what you did
in Civil Rights without feeling a sense of righteous anger about
I don't mean in the sense of wanting to strike back and hurt
whites. But a sense of righteous indignation about the system>
When did that start? Did it start early in you?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No, I accepted the system as it was.
I'm never surprised as I think about it now how, not docile, but
how acceptable Blacks, Negroes took things without rising up and
how many times abusive the system was. I guess even at the time
I got married when I was nineteen, I worked around white people
who had charge of everything. In the old Southern Club Building,
I had to sterilize needles for doctors, examine welfare patients
and the doctor would examine people. I would sterilize needles
23
and a few other little chores there at the Southern Club. That's
where I met Ruby. I always regarded the white people and what
they did as totally apart from us. It was a thing that you
accepted. I don't think at that time I ever felt aggrieved to
the point of where I wanted to hit a white man. Do you
understand what I am saying?
INTERVIEWER: I don't mean to the point of your wanting to strike
a . . .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: You mean about the system. Well I
always knew the system was wrong. You must remember I went to
Mobile. I even worked, before I went to Mobile -- we married in
'41 until '43 -- I worked my first job at the [Alpha Portland]
cement plant. There was this deacon, I can't think of his name,
I might have told you before, who had been there sixteen years
working in the cement plant and he was making $.52 an hour. I
made $.54 an hour hooking cars down in the quarry for the man who
put it up and dump it and crush the rock. The old man who was
the assistant named, named Ewell, when he would come around,
these Negroes would be so nervous until it was like rats getting
out of the way of cats. One day we were shoveling up something
maybe something had broken down. The quarry was down so I was
up there moving around on a different job. Old man Ewell had
several of us doing different things. At this time we were
shoveling something. When Old Man Ewell wasn't there, we wasn't
rushing with that shoveling. When Old Man Ewell came around,
when we saw him coming way around the cement thing and them guys
24
were shoveling three t i mes to my one almost. "There ' s Mr .
Ewell. " I just kept on what I was doing . Old Man Ewell came up
there and he stood there. He didn ' t say anything , just looked.
They were doing almost 2 1/2 to my one . I just kept doing i t
like I was doing it be f ore he got there. "Come on , you are
mighty slow there ." I sai d , "There ' s the man , let him say
something. " He has sense enough to know you a i n ' t doin ' t his
when he ' s not here . I kept on doing what I was doing. Real ly ,
after whil e Old Man Ewell wa l ked away . He d i dn ' t say nothing to
none of them. I t always seemed to me a contradi cti on . I was
ready that day to defy him . I said, "I 'm gonna do what I do
cause I thi nk thi s is the way I ought to do it . Besides , l et the
man tell me what to do." He stood there looking. They were
still sweating down. I f he said one word I was ready t o
challenge h i m if he had sai d anything. I probably woul d have got
fired . I went to Mobile and some of my conversation there
brought out some of t he r acist . Ol d Man Ewell was tough.
He would c urse and he though t we were scared. Bu t t he job I had
in Mobi le driving a t r uck . .
INTERVIEWER : Before you get to Mobile , I want you to tell me a
little bit more about Ruby . You eluded to your meeting her.
Basically I would like for you to tell me how you met, your
courtship , personality , you know , just talk about your wife a
while.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH : Ruby was on the heavy side. I liked
heavy people . I d i dn ' t like light skinned girls fo r some reason.
25
I guess I figured they would call me Black and I'd have to do
something. Ruby was brown skinned and had long wavy hair that
came down to her shoulders. We just met there at the Sout hern
Club which was the old YMCA Building that they called the
Southern Club where they had social things . The doctors
people examined people to see if they were able to work. If they
couldn ' t work they woul d go in and get examined and be declared
unable to work and al l that kind of stuff. That is the part I
remember because that is the part I was in. We met and just
talked. I remember once or twice I walked home with her. Just
pushed my bicycle. I guess when Ruby
INTERVIEWER: You were about eighteen or seventeen?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Yeah , I was eighteen when I graduated
so it had to be after that. Between eighteen and nineteen . I
think I met her in May. I hadn't been there too long . I was on
the Y. Because we married in October ' 41 just before the
Japanese attack. She had been -- her uncle and aunt both of whom
are dead now -- she had been sent to school at Selma University
where I went later. And then Tuskeegee. Ruby had -- if she had
had a whole lot more training, she would have had to have done to
be a registered nurse. Some how or another she just didn ' t want
to go back. She would rather get married .
INTERVIEWER: Did she grow up in Birmingham?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Yeah , she lived in the West End .
INTERVIEWER: What was her childhood?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: She was an AME. Her "parents" went to
26
Thurgood [CME Church]. I don't know too much about her
adolescence . I only met her in May and we married in October. I
did go t o her church , Thurgood CME , where her aunt went once or
twice before we were married. But she was either going to make
up her mind to go back to school or get married. She didn ' t want
to go back to school. Basically that was a lot toward my
decision to marry, because I liked her. I don ' t think I was
deeply i n love with her.
INTERVIEWER : Did you have any girlfriends before her?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH : In the country people do . I was over
seventeen and a half when I had my first incident with sex. It
wasn ' t like kids do now. I was seventeen and a half near
eighteen and I married when I was nineteen. So there wasn ' t a
whole lot of special girlfriends. I was very well liked by all
the girls .
INTERVIEWER: So you dated around before this.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Yeah , and the girl I thought I was going
to marry was named Nellie . I didn't know nothing about courting.
I walked from Oxmoor to Spaulding. It wasn ' t nothing to sit down
and talk. I was satisfied then. But I remember another guy by
the name of Leslie. Leslie finally married Nellie. I was
courting her and he married her. But I never touched her, never
thought about it real ly too much.
INTERVIEWER: Your courtship with Ruby was less than a year?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Oh , yeah, I met her in May and married
her in October.
27
INTERVIEWER: So you worked in the same place . What was the
standard courtship practice? Was yours a standard courtship?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: It might not have been standard to t he
extent that, well, what do you mean by standard?
INTERVIEWER: What would people your age normally
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: We would go to a movie once in a while ,
not too many times. I would go to visit her uncle ' s house. Went
to chur ch with her once or twice. I lived out in the country but
she lived in the city , and I saw her basically on the job more .
INTERVIEWER: How did t he decision come that this was the woman
you wanted to marry?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH : I liked her, I liked the way she was
built . I liked the way she was shaped. I liked her as a person
and we didn ' t even have sex until we got engaged . We got engaged
just two or three weeks before we married .
INTERVIEWER: Did you feel you were always able to talk with her?
What did you talk about during your courtship?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: General things. Nothing of great or
special importance. Her schooling , mine. She accepted me
without question . And I did her , because I liked her qui te a
bit.
INTERVIEWER: What would you say were the most significant
influences on her mi nd , growing up, until you and she were
married .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, she was in boarding school. I
take it that she had an interesting life. We never did talk too
28
much about it .
INTERVIEWER : Were you already thinking about going into the
ministry when you met her?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Yeah, I think it was after about , I
guess it began when my father died . This is the point when I was
eighteen. I hadn ' t been too bothered about the ministry before
then. I just always knew I wanted to be one . I knew I had to be
educated to be a pastor. So that in church and Sunday School my
gifts were apparent. I stayed in Oxmoor. When we moved and I
married, we moved to let me see, did we move to Birmingham first
or did we move - - I think we moved to Eighth Avenue and 24th
Street first to a six room house and we had one side . Even then
I remember having said to my presiding elder , Sims , just before I
got married, because I was around eighteen then, that I thought I
had begun wanting to be a minister. He told me at the Annual
Conference he would submit my name. Well, the next time the
conference was I had gone to Mobile . I had left the cement
plant. I left automobile training and went to Mobile. And at
this t i me I had a child. So it was after eighteen before I
indicated he told me the next year at the conference he would
take my name into the bishop and get what you call a licentiate
an exhorter ' s license , whatever they are called. I never did
keep up with that and I went on to church. But when I married in
Birmingham, here is one thing I had to keep constantly. During
that time when I married , from October and moved away from Oxmoor
into Birmingham, I still commuted to St . Matthews Church AME,
29
through the snow, through the rain. Didn l t make any difference I
still was there because I was at one time superintendent of the
Sunday School , even after I married so that I was always up in
the church. I would walk across the mountain , till the streetcar
line would corne. Then when I got my first car which was a 135 v­B
I was commuting from Birmingham then . We left Birmingham after
while to move with her aunt, Dora Greene in West End . That is
where I bought my first car , a 135 V- B. But I still stayed in
church so that it would have been the communication with the
presiding elder. But I had made myself known to them that I had
wanted to be a preacher.
INTERVIEWER : So Ruby knew pretty much from the beginning that
you had anticipated becoming a minister.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Yeah , we talked about it.
INTERVIEWER: Did she like the idea of being the wife of a
minister?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I donlt think she relished the idea .
INTERVIEWER: Why?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: In our discussions of it she, I heard
her talking to somebody that she never did relish the idea of a
minister l s wife. But i f she was going to get me , she had to be .
So it wasnlt too much of a discussion that I had to get her to
agree with what I wanted to be . That never entered into our
discussion. Of course , remember I didnlt get into the ministry
until I went to Mobile which was a little bit that next year.
Because we bought, while we was living at Aunt Dorais we bought
30
this p i ece of property. I had contracted for $750.00. It was
the f i rst lawsuit I had to get in . I had a man to move the house
because it was slightl y across another property line . And so we
lived from '41 to ' 43 in the spring and summer in our a little
bit in and a little bit at her Aunt's -- and wound up in our own
house which I years later sold. So I went t o Mobile to "make
money. "
INTERVIEWER: Before you get to that I want to stay on your wife
for a little while here . Did she gradually grow into the role of
a pastor ' s wife .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I don ' t think Ruby ever liked the idea
that I was in the ministry .
INTERVIEWER: Why didn't she like it?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well , I always was a popular individual
-- with men and women. I am not just talking about women. It
was a thing that people saw something in me and I was always
alert and vigorous . At first , it was nice. I didn ' t have any
charge like in the Movement or church. I had no special
charge where I had to be doing the mini stry , or be away from
home . We just went to church because that was in my upbringing.
I don ' t think she liked church as much as I did . Especially when
we got married and she had to go . But she would go. And
sometimes she didn ' t go , as I recall. But I had to be sick to be
out. Before I bought the car I had to catch the streetcar to
ride to where I would walk for four or five miles to be at
church. Even I remember in the snow I did that. Back to your
31
question . When we went to Mobile. Did I give you how we got
into the Baptist church?
INTERVIEWER: You have , I am going to ask you a little more about
that after while. I am still interested in the kind of
relationship that you had with your wife. Did you make all the
decisions in the home?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Concerning what?
INTERVIEWER: Well , if she made decisions were they about the
house? For example, when you moved to Mobile was that something
you decided, or did you discuss it? Was it the kind of thing you
talked about or you just kind of decided and she did whatever you
said .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH : Basically I decided but I discussed it
with her. I had the feeling definitely at this time that my
calling was definitely to go into the ministry yet I was leaving
it to go to work. I did not feel as if the $4.32 a day was what
I wanted so I got this work and I took automobile mechanics
training . This is where I met Dewi tt Murphy and Dave - - I can l t
think of Davels las name -- and we took automotive mechanics. As
I recall I took 700 and some hours of it so you can figure out
the frame of time that I was doing that. Maybe it was a period
of four or five months. But I wanted to better my condition.
But at no time did I neglect church even when I was taking that.
Dewitt and David, we were on the job and we talked about going to
Mobile , going somewhere where we could get into war work, which
would pay more money. Dave had a cousin living in Mobile, named
32
lola -- I can't think of he r l ast name . They figured we could
stay there until we got a job. So I resigned from this
automobile tra ining s ituation -- Bechtel, McComb, Parsons.
INTERVIEWER: You took this training while you were s till at
Al pha Portland?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No , I r esigned and took the train ing at
Bechtel, McComb, Parsons. It wasn ' t a year because I would have
had more than 700 hours a year. It was from February until up in
the spring. I think we went to Mobile i n the middle of July of
144, which means I had worked from 141 until 144 at the cement
plant. That June or July had to include the time I took this
training, four or five , maybe six months. We decided , I t old her
I am going t o go to Mobile and see if I can get a contract for
de fense work. Her aunt was in Birmingham so it was no problem.
We drove down there and f ortunately the ve r y next day -- we went
down there t o go to the s hipyar d . Somehow the next day we
decided to go by Br ookley Fie ld Air Force Base on our way to the
shipyard and they hired u s just like that. So I got this job
driving a truck. If I didn't have a nything to do it didn't hurt
me to drive , sitting in a truck all day just like I am s itting in
this chair. This is how I got the chance to read the Bible a
l ot. Circumstances caused me to go back and get my wife. I
don 't know how far our inte r v i ew went before. In additi on to
being alert and meeting people and people taking to me just like
this, we stayed with a ver y old man who had a porch that went all
a r ound the house as I remember. It had a little round bar ber
33
shop which was inside. It wasn't as big as this -- and in that
barber shop lived three single women whose husbands were in the
army at that time and gave them $50 a month. They all liked me.
I didn ' t go in there but a couple of times. When we would come
from work -- I think we worked from 3:30 to 11:00. I would see
them two of them. One of them just made herself obnoxious and
she was a light skinned Negro , real shapely and everything. I
didn't like -- besides she came with things to cover her bra and
real short pants. I thought women should wear dresses. She had
these short shorts on . She just flipped her lid over me . It was
nonsanctimonious. I didn't want to get involved. I remember
Dewitt and Dave -- and we would play checkers . She made herself
more obnoxious by pushing my moves on the board. I was
disgusted. She was an attractive woman but she was just pushing
herself. It wasn ' t but a day or two that I felt like I needed to
go back home to my wife. I went over and met the other two
girls. One of them I could have liked real well. But all three
of them thought I was nice. So I was telling Dewitt and Dave
about it. Dave and DeWitt were saying, "You fool. You don't
know too much about women . All of them like you. One of them
said she could go for you any day." Instead of it making me feel
like jelly, I really felt like I needed to go home and get my
wife. We had planned to stay down there and work and then I was
going to get our people down. Going back some months later.
INTERVIEWER: How long before you got there until the time Ruby
came?
34
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH : It wasn ' t over a month and a half . Less
than that maybe . The girl was so insistent, she wanted me to go
to a movie with her. I didn ' t want to go . Dewitt and Dave said,
"Well , you can go to the movie, there ain ' t nothin' wrong with
that ." So I d i d take her to the movie one time. She knew I
didn ' t like her . I said it in front of them and everybody else.
I am sure my mind , to be honest about it , had it been one of the
other girls I might would have got involved more. I don' t think
anything would have got me away from my basic moorings . I can
definitely say that. My basic religious training -- making God
first. It was good for me that I didn ' t particularly like her .
Her color , her just making herself a nuisance. But all three of
them would give me their checks which I thought was detestable .
A man living off a woman. These things mitigated to making my
quick decision to go back home and get my wife . So I don ' t
believe I was there over -- I know I had gotten one paycheck
but before the next weekend I had rented a house in the project .
INTERVIEWER: You a lready had one child by this time?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Pat was already born , February ' 43. She
would have been a little over a year old.
INTERVIEWER: So when Ruby came, the baby came too . Did you live
in the same place?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I rented an apartment in a section of
Maysville .
INTERVIEWER: Did she work outside the home?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH, No . No . I still worked at Brookley
35
Field Air Force Base. I went to church every Sunday .
INTERVIEWER: That leads me to ask about this . You have told me
before that you went -- you tried to go to a Methodist Chu r ch and
the services weren ' t particularly spiritual and you went to
Corinthian Baptist Church and you felt welcome and warm.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: And I worked with the people. Just
opened up to me and I think I told you this before. If I didn't
I shoul d have . They just deferred to me . They left their car to
me . They would let me have their car. They would walk to work
at Brookley Field Air Force Base . It was an amazing thing how
the way was always open for me.
INTERVIEWER: Now Reverend E. A. Palmer was the pastor there.
Did he have any particul ar i nfluence on you?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: In the sense that he was a strictly
moral person . His interpretation of the scripture -- he was not
a very emotional preacher. He wasn't a "Zoomer." You could get
what he was saying. His thoughts were very pronounced . To that
extent it was good. The other thing was I guess it showed me
that no man is perfect . No man is God and I am sure I told you
about this one person that was always provocative to him. The
fellows , if they would want to say something to him, they would
get [Alfred1 LeShore . They called him Bo. In meetings Bo would
chall enge him. Bo was one of my close friends and so were these
other people who I called devils . They were nice to me. Gave me
utmost respect , tol d me many of their secrets. Reverend Palmer ,
when he'd see him [B01 coming he would change colors and he was
36
already Black. I think this helped me to l earn in my dealing
with people to I said this was God's way -- we were s itting on
out in Maysville, ' cause he lived in another section. One day
we were sitting on the porch of somebody ' s house. Alfred
LeShore, passed by . He changed from his normally dark color to
the color of his sweater . He spoke. I had been in some church
meetings, which had had friction that he had egged on . So he
said he was awar e -- he sensed that I saw him. He said to me,
"You know I know you can feel a sense that I just can't stand
him. There is just something about him I just can't be
comfortable around him. II I said to him "Reverend Palmer, I am
much younger than you are. I really l ook up to you . That is the
person you probably ought to try to understand. Because what he
is saying and what the others are saying, he just thinks he's got
courage . He thinks it shows his manhood to jump at you . You
have to learn to respond to it." He said , "Well, he just really
gets on my nerves. " I said, "He loves you and probably respects
you more than the rest of them. That ' s just your cross. You are
going to have to bear that. If you can learn not to jump back at
him every time he jumps a t you, I can't tell you what to do but
it would be better -- all that he says I hear him say , they don't
have the courage to say that."
INTERVIEWER: What else did you learn from Reverend Palmer?
Would you say that you were closer to him than any other minister
up until that time, were you closer to Reverend Palmer? REVEREND
SHUTTLESWORTH: Oh , yeah, but you must remember I didn 't meet him
37
until '44.
INTERVIEWER: Would you call him sort of a father in the
ministry?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Yeah, and people used to say I favored
him a lot. Course he was a little lower than I was. He was an
older man. He was in his sixties when I met him. Yes, I think
he had an influence in that way, although I was always set in my
religious beliefs. He would pastor -- he came out once a month
at his church where he lived out in Pritchard. By him just
pastoring Corinthian -- no I'm sorry three Sundays. One Sunday
out there. The Sunday that he didn't pastor -- he had this other
fellow, his assistants carrying on. They didn't have much
thought in their messages; they were just good people.
[Indistinguishable.] When I came it was a little gray you
understand. All of them including the old men, older than
Reverend Palmer, Reverend Greene, Reverend Richardson and some
others who always deferred to me. They let me preach and it got
to where the Sundays that they knew I was going to be there, even
when I went to school in Selma and would go back to Mobile.
INTERVIEWER: During those years how often did you preach in
these ministers's churches. You were not pastoring yourself but
how often were you preaching?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I wasn't pastoring.
INTERVIEWER: Yeah, I know, as a member, just a normal member of
Corinthian Baptist Church. These pastors were calling on you to
fill their pulpits from time to time.
38
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: From time to time. Then I was going to
school at night and I would be known for having a gift. The
district association over which Reverend Palmer was a moderator,
I had a chance to expound theories and so forth. But it wasn ' t
like every Sunday.
INTERVIEWER: How often, would you say about once a month?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: That I preached at somebody ' s church?
INTERVIEWER: Yes .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No. Not that often. I preached at
Corinthian after I had been there from about ' 45 or ' 46, I
preached at the other church -- I'd have one Sunday. Then when
Palmer would be ill he would let me speak and some time on Sunday
nights.
INTERVIEWER: So what other lessons in the ministry did you learn
from Reverend Palmer or from observing him?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, I learned something I tell all
young ministers, that people would push you. They naturally, I
had three [young ministers ] coming up under me and I would give a
message to my son- in-law because he is should learn this too ,
that no matter how popul ar you become, to keep your head level
and not get overbalanced and think you are the only thing.
You ' re just there. They came down and sent these people , John,
Duke and several men and they always enjoyed it, being around me
and I enjoyed being around them. I told them we began to raise
chickens and do a lot of things together. Go fishing. They got
to the point where my influence and my gift to preach - - other
39
preachers would just be there . They never would preach. It was
just deferred to me on the Sundays he wasn ' t there. Someti mes I
would preach when he was there when he got sick or something .
When he got sick he would just ask me t o preach. They dec i ded to
use my influence to get him out of the church . They knew the
church gonna be full the Sunday I'm there. So John , and I
forget who the other one was , Palmore Dockery, good fellow,
Sunday School Superintendent , said to me one night, IIReverend,
-- this was a l ong time -- we want you just to preside at the
meeting -- you don ' t have to take no stand on nothing. This is
something that we feel ought to be done." You know, I listened
to them and I didn ' t disagree with them. But they were getting
together and they were going to bring up a vote against him and
vote him out . I didn ' t give any answer. I said, "Well, I'm not
sure about this. " They said , "Well, you don 't have to be
we
involved in it, you just be sure that what ' s done is done right."
So that night , that i s when I knew the Lord was really guiding
me, I d i dn ' t s l eep hardly at all. It was 2:00 o ' clock in the
morning before I went to sleep. I talked to Him. "God forbid
that I turn my hand against the Lord ' s anointed" like David when
Saul was trying to kill him. I knew that was the Lord talking to
me. So at 5:00 o ' clock - they always gathered around Palmore
Dockery and Paul Lawson and me were right together. John lived
up the street about a b l ock and a half and he was a so we
always gathered around Paul's house. I remember it was cool that
morning because they had a fire up there. They were standing
40
around talking getting ready to go to work . Tom was going to go
t o Mobile to go to Brookley Field to work and Paul had the fire
there because he was a b l acksmith, famous blacksmith . Palmo r e
was getting ready to go wherever he went . I got up at 4:30 so
I'd be sure to get there during their meeting . I went there and
they said , "Hey , Reverend, you 're up mighty early." I said,
"Yeah , I didn't get any sleep last night. I want to tel l you this
that ya 'll can't hol d no meeting Sunday when I 'm ther e . When I
get through preaching I am going to dismiss the folks and suggest
that they go home. All night last night t he Lord was telling me
that God forbid that I put forth my hand against the Lord ' s
anoint ed . Now Reverend Palmer has not done anyt hing to me . If I
had differences with him I would t ell him, and if you all have
differences, ya ' ll ought to tell him. You had told me I wouldn ' t
have nothing to do with it if I wouldn ' t do nothing but presi de
but I will have something t o do with it if I let it happen when I
am there. So when I get through preaching I am going to say I am
leaving. So when I get through , I am going to tell the people
I 'm leaving . If you all have a meeting, you will have it on your
own . I suggest you go home because I don't know nothing Reverend
Palmer has don but he is a decent and honest man. " And Dockery,
who talked the most , said to me." And John -- John was a crook I
think. He said, "Well, Reverend, I respect you for that . You
are a man of God."
INTERVIEWER: Did they go ahead and ge t rid of Reverend Pa lmer?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: That ' s what they wanted.
41
INTERVIEWER: But did they go ahead and do it?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No, no, it didnlt even come up.
And that Sunday I didnlt have to tell the people nothing. But I
was going to. I said, IINow if you are going to have a meeting and
you announce it, I will have to say I have a feeling as a member
of this church, that we donlt have anything to hold against the
pastor at all. You sure ainlt paying him nothin -- $20.00 a
Sunday. You talk about really getting close to them. They
really got close, but it kept them from messin l -- from
destroying another preacher.
INTERVIEWER: Are there ways in which you can look at your career
in the ministry as a pastor and say that in some ways the way I
do things I got from Reverend Palmer?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No. We are totally different people.
INTERVIEWER: You didnlt emulate him in any particular ways?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Except in, and you could get that from
anywhere, thinking about his messages and getting a thought out
of it. We donlt preach alike. I guess trying to be upright in
front of the people. That would be my bent anyway.
INTERVIEWER: What age person was he?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: He was in his sixties when I first met
him.
INTERVIEWER; I assume he is deceased now.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Oh, yeah, I went to his funeral. Then I
guess another thing was, he was moderator of the association. He
was the top man in the association and he was pushing this
42
school. Cedar Grove Academy. He was dedicated so I guess I
should say I got some emphasis there from his life. But I didn't
have to meet him to become dedicated.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, well a couple of questions relative to that
but before I get to that, when did you start going to Cedar
Grove?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Shortly after I went to Mobile. See,
when I went to Mobile I wasn't preaching. I started preaching in
'44. I went to Mobile in '43. In June 1944 was when I was
licensed to preach. I had told him before that I wanted to be
baptized. I was baptized probably before '44 in that time. Then
in June 1944 I got my license to preach. I was the first
preacher he had liked. Although they went out from it too. Just
a thing that spiritually did not move me and I went back to
Corinthian and I quit going to Corinthian for a couple of
Sundays. I went to my church and I went back to Corinthian for a
couple of Sundays to be sure that I wanted to then I
communicated to my wife. I told her what I was thinking about.
I wasn't really thinking that you had to get out from your
background to do the work of the Lord. I wasn't really thinking
that you couldn't be under a bishop and do what I needed to do.
That wasn't in the back of my mind. I came to that understanding
later. Had I been Methodist I never would have been able to go
out here. But it was that I was trying to stay in line with what
my traditions were. I had to figure out in my mind how mamma
would feel if I told her I went to the Baptist church. EVen Ruby
43
felt the same thing.
INTERVIEWER: That that particular local church was colder than
the Baptist .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Look like the preacher was straining
trying to preach and I was more sorry for him more than I was
listening to his sermon.
INTERVIEWER: Let me get to your baptism. Whenever it was, did
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: That had to be in the fall or before the
fall.
INTERVIEWER: Any particular thing you remember about your being
baptized as an adult at this point?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I indicated to Reverend Palmer shortly
after I went to Mobile, after I started going to church, that I
was a Methodist and had been feeling for some time, since I was
18 1/2 because of the ministry, and John and them were saying,
"Yeah, the way you were talking in Sunday School, we could see
that you had something unusual about you." Not that I put any
stock in that. And so, I had talked to them about it before I
had talked to the pastor. I told him when I first met him I told
him I went to the Methodist Church but all of the people were
just so warm. It wasn't too long after I started visiting his
church that I felt a difference and he knew almost forthwith that
I had to, being called to the ministry, he said, "Well, of
course, if you feel that way about it, we will take you in and we
will have to baptize you." He said "I have never licensed a man
44
before." Ordinarily that would have turned me off right there
but I wasn't talking to him just to get a license. I was talking
about how my basic slant was. Of course John and them worried me
to corne on and do it. I said, "Well if you like it here corne on
and join over here." I said, "Well, I am a Methodist." They
said, "It ain I t where you go." I said, "Well, I I 11 think about
it." I talked to Ruby about it. She noticed a difference too.
So I said "You know I feel like I might join that church. I am
going to go back again." I went to the Methodist church again.
I think it was two Sundays straight to see if I could feel -- you
know you can crush something in them to get what they want. It
was just worse than ever. I didn't get nothin' out of the
sermon. I didn't feel moved. It was cold. Even the litaneous
[liturgical] section of the service which I used to enjoy from a
boy up, just didn't take. It was during that time, if you would
ask me some special thing of Reverend Palmer, you was asking me
while ago, it was during that time that he preached the sermon,
during that period of time he really preached where Samuel took
the ark where it had been taken by the Philistines and brought it
back to Gilgal or wherever it was. He preached that sermon.
"Here I set my Ebenezar for hitherto has the Lord helped me in
the time of decision making." I don't know whether you use the
word decision making. You saying what the Lord does for you, you
have to make up your mind. I think he was talking to me because
I didn't even comment but that sermon stuck in my mind. I made
up my mind shortly thereafter. I knew it was going against all
45
my traditions. I was a Hide bound traditionalist in the
Methodist church. So then I made up my mind . I told him "I have
decided I am going to join this church. II He said , "We will be
g l ad to have you . " I said , "You know , I told you that I felt
this call to preach. " He said , IIWe ll, that will be no problem .
Just have to license you. Baptize you. " So I was bapti zed one
Sunday night . As I recal l it was Sunday night. After that I got
the license , because he made known to him that I was [a preacher]
-- and then attending Sunday School and making all the services
after that . I participated and everything .
INTERVIEWER: Did Ruby, was she baptized at some point in the
Bapti st church?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: She was baptized i n the Corinthian
Church.
INTERVIEWER: You were discussing whether to leave the AME Church
with her. Did she have any strong feelings . .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: She did at first , you know , we ' re from
the Met hodist Church . You ' re Methodi st , I 'm Methodist, Mamma ' s
Methodi st. But it was never a thing . .
INTERVIEWER: What did your mother think?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well , I told her how I had this feeling.
I told her I went out and when we would go back home
periodi cal ly . You remember it wasn ' t t oo long before I l eft her
before I had become a Baptist , because it was during that fa l l in
' 44 when I was baptized. She said , "Well, son , you remember
what ' s coming to you. If it ' s what you feel the Lord wants you
46
to do, you have to do it. So I had no quarrel, and with her
[Ruby'sJ auntie, there wasn't no quarrel.
INTERVIEWER: Let me ask another question related to your call to
the ministry. We have talked about this before. On one hand you
talk about as long as you can remember you wanted to be a
preacher. In your mind, at what point did it begin to narrow
down and [being aJ doctor became out of the question and minister
-- let me ask you a different way. In your mind was there a
difference between something that you felt it was "I want to be a
minister" and a sense of calling that God wanted you.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: More than that. It was a sense that
this is what God wanted me to do.
INTERVIEWER: When did that sense that God wanted you .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Before I left Birmingham to go to
Mobile. I had the sense. I was superintendent of the Sunday
School and I had the sense that this is what God wanted me to do
but any time you disrupt your family life, that's putting it more
on the back burner. I was to be carried to the next Methodist
Conference to get my license. My minister had already promised
me that.
INTERVIEWER: What I am trying to get at is the point at which
you realized things were changing from "I want to be a minister"
to "God wants me to be a minister."
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Before I met Ruby.
INTERVIEWER: Not so much when it happened but how did you come
to realize?
47
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: It comes into your deepest . • . like
right now. There are things that I may have ideas about or I may
decide but comes to me deeply when I am really praying and
meditating.
INTERVIEWER: How do you know the difference between what you
want to do and what God wants you to do?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Because, it stays on your mind. You
can't get away from it. It stays there despite the fact that you
might set it on the back burner or you might do this and that.
This is when I feel this way about something, I move on it. Like
I told the preacher in Birmi ngham, when God tells me to jump, I
jump. It's up to Him to fix a place for me to land. I feel that
way about it now. But it comes deepest in your mind. It comes
to you in a way that you know it is not just some manmade
aversion or some manmade
avocation or whatever it is. Or some man-made machination. You
really corne to a conclusion that this is what I understand God
wants me to do.
INTERVIEWER: There wasn't a particular time or place or event
that made you realize, "You know, God really does want me to be a
minister."
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, I knew when I heard that sermon
that made me consider a change and join the church. That was not
because I thought that a bishop was going to stop me from doing
what I wished, i t was because this was what the Lord wanted me to
do. Before that, before I left to move to Mobile, I knew that
48
this was what the Lord wanted me to do and I no longer felt any
affinity, or have any ambivalence about being a doctor or a
minister.
INTERVIEWER: Let me go on to something else here now. You
mentioned Cedar Grove Academy. That was founded by Reverend
Palmer. Now at some point you mentioned a Doctor Maynard, a
white Baptist minister.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I met them out there.
INTERVIEWER: At Cedar Grove?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: At Cedar Grove.
INTERVIEWER: Okay now I don't understand the arrangement whereby
a school founded by a Black minister like Reverend Palmer -- how
was it that a white minister was teaching
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: He wasn't teaching there. He would corne
out and lecture sometimes. He wasn't a regular teacher. But the
white Baptists had what was known as "Good Will Missionary to the
Negroes." He would visit churches. He would visit district
associations. He would visit anything that the Black Baptists
had. So the whites had liaison. Their commitment to God was
that they acting as liaison and talking to Black folks.
INTERVIEWER: His horne was in Mobile?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Mobile.
[Interruption. ]
INTERVIEWER: You were talking about Reverend Maynard and his
wife. Would you tell me generally about your going to school at
Cedar Grove.
49
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I would go out there maybe two times or
three times a week.
INTERVIEWER: At night?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Yeah. This time our shifts had changed
from morning to evening. I would drive until 3:00 at night . The
first it was from 3:00 - 11:00. I'd take review papers or go out
there. I started looking at a little Greek. Not that much. It
was theology basically. Bible study by books and then systematic
theology. Those were the basic things. You'd never get through
the book. It was a great big thick book . This was over a period
of time but I started going to school as quickly as I joined the
church. Reverend Palmer told me I should study so I went out and
enrolled. That's where I got in church , Reverend Palmer being
the moderator. Maynard and his wife would be fairly conversant
with them and I said to Reverend Palmer that I felt like my
calling was to reach a lot of people and that I wanted to go to
school . So he, naturally , I guess he indicated this to them and
they , in addition to seeing me in different places , made it their
business to see what they could do. So one or two times that I
recall they gave me extra clothes and stuff like that. I
communicated with them. Old Man Maynard was a good teacher. He
was prepared for the ministry. They have it in theology and so I
communicated to them that I had hoped to go to school. They said
they would help as best they could. The time came when I went up
to a theological debate and summer school and I had a speech that
I learned very quickly. Brother Motley, the same fellow that was
50
in Mobile then. He was in Se l ma University and I debated against
him. It was almost like President Bush over Dukakis. I said to
the President [of Selma Universi t y] I wanted to go to school. He
said "Well , we would be glad to have you. II He said "We are going
to build some houses down there where married students can live. 1I
So I was t he f irst married student to live there. So it was in
'46 when I went to give the debate and '47 -- my son was born in
September '46 -- and I wouldn 't leave my wife, but I went to
school in '47. During t he hurricane when we moved.
INTERVIEWER: Before you get to Selma, what sti cks out in you r
mind about what you learned from Cedar Grove. Anything in
particular?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Basically I enjoyed
INTERVIEWER: How long did you go to c l asses there?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Over a peri od from '45, '46 and up to
the time I l eft . Basically the pastors of the churches were the
teachers -- B. B. Williams of St Lewis Street Baptist Church.
Lovely fellow , I just loved him. U. J. Robinson , who was the
Secretary of American Bapti st Convention under o ld Dr. Jemison.
But I always thought u . J. had a lot of probl ems , being the Mr.
It. Parti ally stuck on himself I guess. And John , who was the
church clerk , showed me a note where way back when Corinthian
needed to borr ow some money, he charged them $10.00 to sign a
note. I always held that against him in my own mi nd . He came to
Selma University later. But at Cedar Grove I was a lways
impressed with Dr. J. A. Robinson of Stone Street , which I
51
thought was one of the finest ministers I ever met. B. B.
Williams. B. B. would talk to me about little nonsensical and
yet funny things. He would tell me about his life. E. B. walked
kind like he was hurt. He couldn't walk good. He was telling
about the time he was up preaching and made emphasis by kicking
at the devil and his foot got caught in a chair and he'd like to
have fallen. Things like that. He taught English. J. A.
Robinson taught systematic theology. U. J. taught New Testament.
I remember in that school Miss Palmer taught music. That is
where I learned to sing. I remember she had difficulty trying to
teach some of those preachers who never would learn how to sing.
But I had a voice and I could sing. I never did learn notes but
I know when they go up and down. She would always talk how
Reverend Palmer started that school with three oil lamps. She
would talk about it and he would talk about it. He would tell us
all the time about it. The studies I think I really enjoyed and
I really appreciated that school.
INTERVIEWER: How many students generally were enrolled there?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: At that time maybe fifteen. Sometimes
maybe eight or nine.
INTERVIEWER: So basically this Maynard person influenced you in
encouraging you.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No, he didn't influence me to go to
school; they just promised to help. If you asked me what
influence I got from them I am not sure that I got any except
encouragement. If I had any needs, but I was working. I never
52
was the kind of person to ask for anything. They would give us
as students. I always took it at my own obligations.
INTERVIEWER: What about your ordination? According to your
certificate over there you were ordained in August of 1948? What
do you remember about that? If you did it in good Baptist
fashion you had a council.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I think the name is on it isn't it?
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember any particular questions they asked
you in the counsel?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: About conversion and you must remember I
would not have been ordained then except that this church called
me from Selma. So when the church called me, I had been there
since '44 with a license -- four years. These were old doctrinal
preachers you know. B. B. Williams I think was on there. He
would have flunked me any way. If he had asked a question I
didn't understand, he would help me. But I was pretty well
caught up in the doctrine. I knew those and I knew something
about Baptist beliefs. Dr. Robinson, I think he is on there too,
J. A. Robinson, who was -- see I didn't have a difficult time on
the council. I was very brilliant. I could sing. I challenged
U. J. Robinson on this thing in Acts where Ananias and Saphira
who didn't turn in the money and lied. So he was saying to us
we happened to be over there studying. He was saying to us that
that was wrong. That was communism. He didn't have any
understanding or grasp of communism. So I said, "Doctor, did you
say this was communism?" "Yeah, nothing but communism. The Lord
53
never intended for everybody to have everything alike." So I
said, "Are you saying it was wrong since it was generally agreed
that everybody sold. What most people don't understand is
people are looking for a quick return of Christ. In that thing
you get whatever you've got anyway. They were not preparing to
live. They were preparing for the rapture. And so heaven
approved it. So I asked him -- he said, "This is wrong as it can
be." I said, "I thought you said we take the Bible as it is."
"Yeah, but I don't know ... " I said, "If it was wrong, why did
the Holy Spirit kill Saphira?" I asked him that in front of the
class. It was a big thing. But I didn't want a doctorate -­"
doctor means something to me. I said, "If it was wrong and God
did not approve of it, why did the Holy Spirit kill Saphira?"
You know what he said? They just died. I said, "They sure did
and anything else is going to die when the Lord gets ready for
him to die." I won out over him. He didn't say too much more
but I really had him hung up on a tree. It was good discussion -
- good give and take. I never did relish differing with teachers
but I just couldn't let him get by with that, telling me that was
wrong. And God had indicated his favor by killing this person on
the spot. But I don't think I ever enjoyed school any more than
those two or three hours a night. Here again, I was the shining
light of that school. Just like later on when I went to Selma
University. I had three children when I went to Selma
University. I made the highest marks average ever at Selma
University, other than just somebody transcended it here lately.
54
I was just apt. I took some Greek there and this and that.
Latin. French.
INTERVIEWER: When you went to Selma what were your favorite
courses? Who were your favorite teachers? Do any of them stand
out. I noticed on your transcript you had taken a course in
Christian doctrine at Selma University. Do you remember anything
about that course?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I think Dr. N. M. Carter died a few
years ago. Dr. Carter taught Christian doctrine and general
theology. He was a nice fellow. I think he got his learning as
he taught. Took training himself correspondence. He was very
genteel. I remember meeting old Dr. Jemison, who was the head of
National Baptist Convention, lived right there below the school.
INTERVIEWER: D. V. (Jemison]?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH, D. V. came up. It was always nice to
meet Dr. Jemison.
INTERVIEWER: What were your impressions of him?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: At that time? He was Head of National
Baptist Convention, Head of District Association, Head of State
Convention. You think of him as being nice but I never did
worship any man. As I learned more about him, I learned he
wasn't really an educated at Selma University. man. He had a
very loud voice like his son [Theodore] Jemison. At Baton Rouge
Jemison preached. He didn't have a -- he is not deeply
theological. He had a loud voice. I remember some of the words
of lecture that he would give. Just about being president of the
55
convention, he would come around and Dr. Dinkins would have him
say something. I don't remember too much about what he said. I
just respected him for his position. I really thought more of
him when I first met him than later.
INTERVIEWER: You also had a course in what we then called "Negro
History." Do you have any particular recollections about that?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I don't remember who taught that. It
wasn't that long.
INTERVIEWER: If you can recall anything, I would guess that the
course in Black History
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH:
course.
back in those • • •
I think Robert Williams taught that
INTERVIEWER: days, surely he would have talked about Booker T.
Washington and W. B. DuBois and different
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: DuBois, a little bit, but it wouldn't
have been with the emphasis on Blackness like now. It would be
the emphasis of how some Black persons got to be a role model
more than everybody's role model and this and that. It wasn't in
today's syndrome of things. Most teaching back then was
moralistic and perhaps theological in the sense that it sort of
lists peoples ideals and it was that more than, talking about
these modern theological ideas about what the church ought to be
doing.
INTERVIEWER: Do you have any recollections of coming to a point
where you felt like perhaps you were more pro DuBois over against
Washington? Or Washington over against DuBois?
56
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No, it was I guess after we got into the
Civil Rights struggle. Actually I didn't learn, or think too
much about DuBois , and don't know a whole lot now to be honest
with you . I think Jacqueline Clark, who wrote something on the
Alabama Christian Movement for HUman Rights, did more to
emphasize [Marcus] Garvey's thinking over some others, as I
listen to her talk. Booker T. Washington, :let down your bucket
where you are." Garvey was talking about Blacks ought to be
different and one time he had a "Back to Africa" thing , didn't
he? But I would never agree with that anyway.
INTERVIEWER: Would Washington vs . Carver? When did you forget
hearing about those people?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Generall y, I have always known about
Booker T. Washington. Any time we would have Emancipation Day,
that was the biggest day among Negroes and Blacks anyway back
then. In fac t i t was an Emancipation Day address at the NAACP in
Birmingham where they asked me to serve as NAACP chairman.
Biggest gathering we had among Blacks was basically Emancipation
Day on Human Rights. But I have generally known history about
Washington , Carver and all that kind of stuff. But I never had
too many disti nct studies on Garvey and his philosophy as such
except that he was a historical figure in this period.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, well I think we will let this do for this
session and pick up another time .
57
INTERVIEWER: Reverend Shuttlesworth, how would you essentially
summarize your time at Selma University? How did being at Selma
University affect you or influence you in any way other than
educating you , did it leave a lasting impression on you in some
ways?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: The whole Selma experience was important
to me. Of course, I was grown. I was preaching . I wasn't
ordained. I was accepted in Sel ma almost like I was in Mobile .
People went out of their way to J. D. Pritchard,
Superintendent of Sunday School at First Baptist, where I
eventually pastored. Joe Creer , who had a store right there
across the alley from Selma University , the teachers at Selma
Universi ty , Mr . Dinkins, the president , widely read , Mr. Dinkins
told me one time he knew over a dozen languages . He had all the
knowledge but if his wife hadn't had some money he would have
starved to death. Two times before the last time I saw him you
could almost ball your fist up and get inside of his collar. The
man was a whiz kid on knowledge which I guess, I was a young man
when I went there but I never have been impressed by knowledge.
I could see in him a person who had it but it didn ' t make him a
well rounded person. I thought he was real warped in some of his
senses. For instance , he said to me, "If you make a penny a day
you are making money. Well, that's true. " That ' s what he said
to me. He would go out on the lawn. He took all the time in the
world to teach me about the simplest things. He showed me one
day how to rake leaves on the campus there. It sloped off down
58
into the field where he would go out there and rake up sticks and
leaves. He told me one day "you rake this way for leaves and you
rake this way for sticks." He would always rake this stuff up
into a pile. He'd put kind of a half wire fence around it so the
papers would still blowout. He would rake it up. Any time he
would rake it, within six hours it would be back on the campus
again. I just thought he was nuts, really. I don't think he was
a nutty person but in his own wisdom, I don't think he was wise.
He had told us when he carne up he was real impressed at my
ability of oration. That's how Selma met me. There were a lot
of people in Selma at this thing. Some of the people at First
Baptist where I pastored were there at the program.
INTERVIEWER: This was while you were still in Mobile? And it
was an oratorical contest?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: This is how I was introduced to Selma.
INTERVIEWER: Where was this contest?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Held in the Dinkins Memorial Chapel [of
Selma University] and it was full that day. I told him I would
corne up and he said that he would arrange to build some houses on
the campus for married students. As I said before, I was the
first married student up there. He was going to help me out.
What he called "help" was, like I am supposed to put the windows
in the dormitory and it was my job to fire up the boiler for
Foster Hall which was the girls dormitory. Reverend Motley, who
carne in to [Indistinguishable.] and against whom I orated, he
pastors here now. Motley used to say that Mr. Dinkins had the
59
philosophy of changing food. He could give you grits and gravy
all the time then to change it he'd give you gravy and grits. He
would take a piece of bologna. I remember this. He'd cut it two
ways or three ways, sometimes four to be short. That was his
eating, although I never did particularly eat in the dormitory.
He had a grinder where he could grind flour, all that stuff. He
had anything and he believed in compost fertilizer. That is why
he kept raising that stuff up. For it would fly back out. He
believed in compost -- not chemicals. That's the way he was
doing. I said to him "Do you realize how long it would take you
to fertilize your field with compost?" Now I never did have but
one clash with Mr. Dinkins. He thought I was a brilliant and he
always treated me with respect. I was married. He always called
me -- He never called any preacher "Mr." I wasn't "Mr."
Shuttlesworth. He had a lot of pride. He believed in the
Baptists as opposed to any other denomination. I fixed the glass
and things and fired the boiler. Not enough for a family to live
on. My wife finally started working at Birwell Infirmary
Hospital. It happened to be a Catholic Hospital -- that just got
his guts. So, one morning he said to me "Your wife working at
the Infirmary?" I said, "Yeah, I'm glad she got a job. II He
said, "You know, we're Baptists and she ain't got no business
around there." He indicated to me that she had to stop. I said,
"Mr. Dinkins, now you told me when I came up here you would help.
I can't feed my wife off these pennies you give me for these
windows. Although he did buy a cow for me and I paid the school
60
back by selling them two quarts a milk a day at $.14. I had to
pay for the cow by giving the school two quarts of milk. All
over I sold them for $ .14. But when he said this to me I said to
him, "And besides, Mr. Dinkins, nobody tells my wife what to do
except me." He bit his tongue.
did I have any clash with him.
Never from that day to this day
I liked him. I ' d go by there and
he'd sit up and be working on figures at 5:00 in the morning.
Trying to have an error on something you know.
INTERVIEWER: You talked about his learning and this knowledge.
What was his specific field?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH, I don't know. He was sitting there
talking to me and he told me he knew at least, oh, how many
languages. He knew several languages but he told me he had
expertise in at least fourteen or fifteen different fields,
scientific endeavors and this and that.
INTERVIEWER: Did he teach as well as administer at the
University?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: He didn't teach but he came out to our
Greek class one time. When we heard him reading you could tell
our professor didn't know nothing about it. Then he was reading
Latin one day. He was reading just like you and I are talking.
He was reading French one day. So he was really
INTERVIEWER: Was he a minister?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No.
INTERVIEWER: Were there any particular ways you think he
influenced you? I know you were already an adult by then.
61
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: He showed me how not to believe in a lot
of sense, that you can have a lot of sense but didn't have any
wisdom. I already knew that. The Good Book tells you that. I
am a preacher so I would have some understanding. I did admire
him for his principles. He was against immorality. He would get
up there and make a speech starting off on the chewing gum
traffic, the smoking traffic, the liquor traffic. He talked one
day in chapel for forty-five minutes on vices. Great big vice.
He talked more about that than he did about sex. In fact I never
did hear him say anything about sex. Finally the teachers forced
him to give a little bit and put a pop machine in one of the
lower floors of the building. He was so firm against that kind
of stuff. He was making some statement and climaxed it by
saying, "Only the blood of Jesus can cleanse me for allowing that
sin." -- that pop machine. He was just that way. Doctrinaire.
Course I admired his morality. His wife was a nice little lady.
Her family had had money. She was so sweet. She taught music.
She thought there was nothing like me. She didn't teach me, as
such.
INTERVIEWER: Are there any other teachers there that stand out
in your mind who had influence over you?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, I admired Dean Ellis. He wasn't
nearly as educated as Dinkins. His second wife Eleanor was a
young woman and she would teach us about different things you
know. But I admired him. And Dean Carter in the theological
school.
62
INTERVIEWER: What impressed you about these peopl e , Dean Ellis
for example?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH : Just being a good man. Nothing about
him that moved me. You must remember I was already grown. He
said words of encouragement and back then I preached at two
churches. Call ed to one in July. Before I knew it the other
one , one was t hree miles from Se l ma. The other one was about a
half mile from Selma . Maybe a mile.
INTERVIEWER: Tell me how you came to get those two rural
churches.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, it is amazing. I was just going
to church at Selma University, I mean at First Bapti st. Just
like the people i n Mobile were friendly, I was accepted at First
Baptist Church. Once in the while in the evening I would go
around to some of the other local churches. To be honest with
you , I am not sure, as I go back and think about that because I
didn't consider my gift as a preacher [to be ] intellect so much
because I couldn't whoop. I couldn 't get a tune as such.
[Refers to the Bl ack preaching styl e and practice of moving into
the chant mode .] I think I was down at the market one Saturday
and two of the deacons tol d me they were l ooki ng for a young man ,
would I corne out and preach? In 1948 , and I hadn't been in
Selma too long. I beli eve I met them in April or Mayor June. I
went out there and preached. I had no intentions and no
expectation of being called. They called me at Everdal e [Baptist
Church ] .
63
INTERVIEWER: Let me ask you this. Ah .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: They called pastors every year anyhow.
INTERVIEWER: I am a minister and I remember my first sermon. Do
you remember your first sermon? Tell me about it.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: In Mobile God was speaking to the man
that told Saul to go on his way down there that there was someone
down there to tell you what to do. This man talked to him and
the Lord told him and said he was a chosen vessel. And my text
was "And I will show him how great things he must suffer for my
name ' s sake -- Paul." Incidently, that ' s been my life. And I
hadntt thought about it ttil you mentioned it just then. That
was my first sermon "and I will show him how great things he must
suffer for my name's sake." My sermon was about Paul's journey
to go and persecute and ran into this light that blinded him. He
asked God the questions, "who" and "what would you have me to
do?1t which I think are the two basic questions of life. I dontt
know how theological I was and I don ' t think I stood up ten
minutes. Looks like when I got up something left me. But that
was my first sermon.
INTERVIEWER: What else do you remember about some of your first
sermons while you were in Mobile, or sort of going around
preaching in different churches in Mobile and then when you first
got to Selma?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I remember the first t i me I preached and
the whole church got happy. This was another man ' s church. It
was a church in Hopewell Avenue or one of the areas out from
64
Mobile. I preached on "Greater is He that is in you than he that
is in the world." That was a time it might have been a time
when people had me to tryout for a church. I don't remember.
But I remember that it was such a tremendous thing to one of the
deacons who asked me to come out. He didn't know who was coming
that Sunday. It was vacant and I was back in the study and he
came in and said "Are you the preacher that is going to preach
here today?" I said "Well, yes." He said, "You sure don't look
like no preacher to me." When I got up to preach, I preached for
about twenty minutes. He came up to the pulpit. I gave him my
hand to shake my hand. He grabbed me around my legs and carried
me around in front of the church shouting. He was happy. I was
afraid he was going to drop me. But my text "Greater is He that
is in you than he that is in the world." Never preached it
since. I remember that and I remember preaching at a lot of
churches.
INTERVIEWER: In those early days of your preaching, did you ever
talk about Civil Rights in those days?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No, but I am sure that many times I
talked about what was right and what was wrong. We took the idea
the white man can't keep things his own way or can't keep as a
regular cliche. [We'd say} "Your day is coming," but not to jump
off to attack them for racism, we didn't know about that. We
knew segregation and discrimination was wrong. Nobody could
justify that before the world. God will do . . . you know, that
was the persuasion.
65
INTERVIEWER: You didn't necessarily talk about it in sermons?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Yes, of course, even when I was
preaching to white folks. White people in the audience. It
never bothered me. I have never cut out anything, even when I
speak about Civil Rights. I say whatever comes to my mind.
INTERVIEWER: But would you say it was not a major theme of your
preaching?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No, it was not. Okay, Jezebel like we
said, "A dog will lick your blood. II White man got to give an
account for all his sins. We talk about you got to have some
white man to say you are a good nigger, or this and that. That
is the kind of syndrome we were in. Things had to change.
Trouble don't last always. Segregation isn't gonna last always.
But that was not done with a prophetic zeal to get up and change
segregation.
INTERVIEWER: Well, we will get to how that change occurred in
you in terms of your preaching at some other point. But what I
am interested in hearing, since you didn't talk about Civil
Rights specifically and zealously in those early years, what were
some of your favorite preaching themes or scriptures?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Just passages of scripture. For
instance, I used to do a lot on the blind man. As Jesus passed
by, He saw a man born blind. I just used the word passing and
seeing on life's highway. Where the devil came out of that man
and went in those hogs, one time I said when the hogs had sense
enough to choose death. Not spectacular. I never tried to be
66
spectacular in my thoughts.
INTERVIEWER: Would you say that if you had a purpose for a
sermon, generally were the purposes of your sermons to convert,
to get conversions, to get Christians to live out their lives?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Generally, that was my basic thrust, to
get Christians to live out their lives and to lean toward
conversion. I think all preaching should be done with that
purpose. But you wouldn't have people like acknowledged sinners
sitting before you that you knew -- you weren't in a revival.
Better Christian stewardship. That was the general thing.
INTERVIEWER: Has that changed through the years or
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I think the slant towards Civil Rights
makes you bring out more. All my sermons now are not Civil
Rights sermons. It just depends upon your thought process and
what you intend to get over. I am not sure that you could preach
pure Civil Rights sermon and keep a church interested. You have
to preach Calvary. Calvary is the important thing that the
church is based upon. Birth, life, death, resurrection of Jesus
Christ. But all of life is related to that.
INTERVIEWER: As you began in the ministry and developed through
the years as a minister, how did you relate to death,
resurrection, Calvary, as you mentioned. How did you do it and
relate it to people? Is it a matter of just "Jesus died, if you
believe in him, he will save you." or how did you use that theme
in your preaching as you began?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: The climax of all preaching is Calvary.
67
There are people now who believe that unless you go by Calvary
you havenlt preached, which isnlt so. All the Gospel is -- you
may not even mention Calvary. But the thrust of the Gospel is
doing good, being related to God, being related to each other,
and doing for each other and chiefly bettering your own life in
the sense that you let God do it through you. You canlt do it
yourself.
INTERVIEWER: Let me ask you a question of a white Baptist
minister whose name is Will Campbell.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I have heard of him. He was supposed to
have been a great preacher.
INTERVIEWER: He is an interesting preacher. I wouldnlt
necessarily call him great. He has written a book about his life
and growing up in rural Mississippi and going to Yale and
becoming a preacher and getting involved in Civil Rights.
Somebody asked him if he could sum up the Gospel in 25 words or
less. He came up with something. Let me ask you the same
question.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: If I could sum up the Gospel . . .
INTERVIEWER: In a couple of sentences?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I suspect I would sum it up by saying
that God started off being in creation. God is with us and he
has always been with man. But through Jesus Christ he can relate
himself directly. God is in us. God is around us. We should
not fear. People do. It is according to your degree of faith and
trust that you donlt. I donlt think many people trust God. Many
68
more people have a general bel ief about God but no specific trust
in God . Ours is a fearful generation .
INTERVIEWER: I want to move , before we quit today , and we may
just sort of begin t his and p i ck up with it next t i me.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I want to come back to this one thing.
In the very first church I had pri ncipl es i ngrained in me that I
and I start ed out being straight in the pastorate and no t
contradicting what I t hought to be the thrust of the Gospel . It
took a challenge t o do that . But I have always been willing to do
that.
I NTERVIEWER: What about, you pastored at First Bapti st at Se l ma .
How d i d you come to be pastor there? And I know you ran into
some difficulty wi t h some deacons t here . Would you t ell me
somethi ng about that too . You can start with the beginning of
your
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: There are people who now can be friendly
toward you i f you are sayi ng good t hings wi th which they agree.
Especi al l y i f they have anythi ng to do with the running and
operati on [of the church]. Most Christians want to keep things
as they are . They a r en ' t g i ven to change . We talk about al l
l ife is change , but we aren ' t given to it. This church had a
steepl e that stood at least 75 or 80 feet in the air . It is t he
o l dest Black Bapt ist church in Dallas County . Some of the grea t
preachers of antiqui t y had passed through t hat church. C. H.
Hayes , some of the other preachers there. But the church had , as
the ages go, sort of atrophied . It was a great b i g bui lding. I
69
had to put a roof on that building when I went there. They had a
metal tin roof, toilets on the outside where you pull a chain and
the water would flush the toilets. When you'd get off the toilet
you'd have to run off before you flushed or you would get wet.
So I had toilets put back in a couple floors from the ground. I
had the toilets put back in the basement. That was one of the
big battles I had. I think they had about 200 old aristocratic,
some nice people. I am not saying people can't be aristocratic
and good. But they were people who looked up -- for instance the
only pharmacy in that town at that time belonged to the First
Baptist Church. Some of the middle class people belonged there,
as opposed to Green Street where there was a massive church.
They didn't have many of the so-called "elite" in it. Some of
the better families of Selma had at one time been members of
First Baptist and Tabernacle [Baptist Church], Jemison's church.
When I went there things were dying out. They didn't have -­First
Baptist right now is bigger than that church over there.
I guess it is. You could get a seat anywhere. Of course, when I
started pastoring it, membership picked up and I always had a lot
of visitors come. I never thought that First Baptist was the
greatest pastorate I had. I just happened to be pastoring there
when I had the experience that most closely related me to the
Lord and that I could feel and understand Him actually doing
something when I needed it in a way that I could understand it
was He. Now I've had trouble and had to straighten out some
things in every church I've been to. So that it wouldn't be a
70
great big thing to know that I have controversy anywhere because
I believe in being straight. J. D. Pritchard, Sunday School
superintendent, deacon and trustee, was a genteel man. He wasn't
an educated man but he was nice. He would get real close to you.
He called me F. L. When he would get mad he wouldn't say nothin'
to me. He sang in the choir. His wife sang in the choir.
Pritchard quit his wife and married another woman. Evidently he
had to. All of them sang in the choir. He quit this woman and
went back to his wife.
INTERVIEWER: Are they legally divorced?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Yeah. He was quite an impulsive person.
Nice-looking fellow, too. He had influence. He and Dr. Brown,
the only dentist there, and Ben Harris, who was the only Black
plumber in Selma. Ben was older than all of them. They were key
people in that church. All of the rest of them 78 or 79 people
there were just ordinary people. The decision makers were Ben,
Pritchard and Old Man Harris. You know I was gonna have a
problem when I worked for Ben Harris getting out under those
houses plumbing for $.50 an hour. He would never accept me as
his better. Pritchard was friendly. He would loan me money. He
would loan me $100.00, sign the note at the bank and I always
paid him back even before time. He was the kind of person, I
remember once we were having a meeting: "As many notes as I
signed for him." I said "Did you ever have to pay one of them
back?" Besides you sign a note to get "lowe me" and you weren't
suppose to do that anyway. I am supposed to speak what I think
71
the Lord wants me to say. Not through you. They had, at some
time, before I got there, given that pastor a suit of clothes,
shoes, all that kind of stuff. They had gotten together and
maneuvered where the deacons and the pastor could do anything
they wanted without bringing it to the church. That is never so
in the Baptist church. The body has the authority. Even if they
vote something to be done by the pastor and deacons, the body has
the authority. And in the Baptist church, only the pastor is
over the entire congregation. You don't have to copastor with
the board. Of course , many white ministers do that. Some Black
ones, too. They had refined it even further when I got to First
Baptist, the chairman of the deacons board would preside over the
deacons board meeting and the pastor would preside over the
church meeting . When the Baptist church rules say that the
pastor is the presider over all including the deacons. So they
do everything. For a while I went along with it. But they would
do what they wanted to do first.
INTERVIEWER: Let me interrupt. They were already ensconced in
power in the church when you got there?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Almost like concrete. In fact they said
to me when I, Grimmett had left there Sunday, he had been
involved with some woman. She was a single woman. Grimmett was
married. He just went all out for this woman. His wife was a
homely looking woman, but a very nice person. I heard him say
once "He was going to get rid of that woman if it was the last
thing he did." He would -- they would make him mad he would get
72
up in the pulpit and say on Sunday morning -- I didn't know where
he was --and say "If anybody knows anything about me come up to
my face like a man and tell me." This was in church service.
INTERVIEWER: Was this the previous pastor?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I guess they were getting on him or
saying things. John Frank Grimmett. He is at Nashville right
now teaching. Been teaching ever since he left here. So some
time he would have a fairly nice congregation. He was an
educated person. He was real articulate in his speech, while I
was just a country boy. By my going there with people, people
liked me so much, you understand, and whenever I got a chance to
preach, not trying to lecture or nothing. I just . it was my
gifts I guess. So I am at Everdale pastoring and Mt. Zion and
all of a sudden in October of about 1949, Grimmett leaves the
church. I went to church that Sunday and somebody else preached.
The deacons got together and came to see me after church and
said, "We want you to preach until we get ready to sit down and
get us a preacher." We are going to give you $10.00 which was
like $100.00 to me then. Old Ben Harris said you can move your
service back, people like you here and he even told me "We won't
be considering you as no pastor. But you can make $10.00" which
was fine. Before I went there they had just built a new
parsonage on First Avenue without getting bids for it. Ben just
put the gas in. So there was a lot of talk about Ben taking the
treasury money which caused all sorts of aggravations. The
parsonage was there empty on First Avenue. As an example of what
73
I am talking about their doing what they wanted to do, I was at a
meeting once and the grass was growing up around there -- tall,
over an acre of ground, an acre and a half, maybe two acres.
They didn't want to cut the grass. We were sitting in the
meeting. "Well, we didn't say we were going to cut it. I said,
"Well, who is supposed to cut it? You aren't telling me to get
out there and swing that grass cutter over an acre of ground?
I'll tell you what you do." "N-a-h, we will vote to pay it this
time, $10.00." I said, "N-a-h, they are suppose to cut the
grass. Don't vote to pay it this time. Cause I'm not gonna cut
it next time." This was after some time. I'd been there . . .
I found they were going to be devils regardless. But this shows
you the results of their doing what they wanted to do. So I
finally got to the point where I quit calling meetings every
month. We were in church one Sunday morning and Pritchard was
saying, "Well, its time to have a meeting." NO, I announced then
we were not going to have board meetings. I said, "We will not
have board meetings." Pritchard said, "Well, its time to have
it. " I said, "Well, it may be, but I just announced we wouldn't
have it. It is not necessary to have conflict, argumentation
every month." Of course they said "Well, its time and that's the
rule of the church." I said, "But you can't call a board
meeting can you? I just announced I wasn't gonna call for one."
"So what you gonna do?" "Well, this time I just say it won't be
here." I'll call it later. You asked me a question. This thing
had built up you understand. One of the things I guess that --
74
okay and some of the crux of the matter the deacons were doing
all right so long as they had the means to count the money and
put it in the bank. No problem if somebody had to go or this or
that, or even me, no problem. But they just wanted the privilege
of counting it, which was right. Well, the women, they would
collect money. Instead of turning it in with the names you
couldn't know -- so I just print whatever I had, and there was a
lot of conflict about that. Ben told me -- we were in a meeting,
we met regularly, "You know you ain't got no business . . "Why
you got to put that up on the board?" "Well, its their business
what you turn in isn't it?" I said "I know I told you we're
gonna print whatever you turn in. It's your record. If people
are going to see our name, they have a right to ask for it."
They thought I was letting people have too much to do with it.
Because any curb in their power meant that they could not make a
decision unilaterally. Any other preacher would just go on and
take what they do and be glad to be there. I didn't give a
tinker's darn about whether I was there anyway. Keep in the back
of your mind, however, that I had been working with Ben Harris as
a helper around them houses. He would hurt his finger and curse
and do everything. You must remember when I went there I built
the B. T. U. [Baptist Training Union] and I had built several
circles in different areas at the time. The church was really
growing. They could see these people having too much to do, too
much say. They were determined that it wasn't going to
wasn't any preacher gonna have any power there anyway. That
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didn't bother me so much about that but it was the way they did
things. First of all I had gotten tired sitting in a chair and
let them do as they wanted to do. And if I am there I am
agreeing to it. Then I learned that Pritchard was a hypocrite.
I'd preach some time and he would shout allover the church, and
then he'd sit there and do nothing. So, I never mentioned it.
We finally fixed the bathrooms and put a roof on the church and
people were really moved. We changed the mission president to a
woman who was kinda testy. She didn't take too much. She would
say what she wanted to say. Her daughter was the BTU chairman
and had all these circles. And people liked me so much. I never
talked to one member about another -- against another. Even now.
I just pray for them. Even then not having gone through the
experience that I have had now, I never was nervous when it came
to saying the truth of whatever was on my mind. They were
determined that they weren't going to let this preacher run these
women and nobody would have power in that church. And it just
evolved that things had to be. It came down to tearing the old
toilets out and I said put them under the steps from where they
are now. You go under the steps and you go back under there and
you go to the toilet rather than being on the outside. I said,
"Okay, I want you to understand that I favor what Ben is doing,
even if it is more, but we ought to get bids on it. Just as
simple as that. Pritchard said "We don't need no bids. Let Ben
do it. We don't need no bids." I said, "That's not right, this
is a church. It ought to be more than just for what Brother
76
Harris says, although I favor this . " The conflict was that they
didn ' t need an estimate . Because they said so . I said , "Well ,
why don't we need an estimate?" "Well , we just don ' t need one ."
"But I said we ' re going to get one . It is my duty to say, as the
director of church affairs, so we will get an estimate. 1I Well,
they argued over that but insisted Ben would be on the committee
to get an estimate. You know yourself that there would be a
conflict. So I agreed to it ' cause I had no objection really to
Ben doing it. It had been said around (town] Ben and Grimmett had
run away with the church ; he had put the plumbing in the church,
he put the gas and electric in. The man might have been as
honest as anybody but what I wanted was for it to be fair. The
church had a right to fairness. It a l most got triggered by
Sister Bennett raising some money to go to Birmingham and the
women 's convention. They wanted them to turn the money in , which
was all right. Nora Bennett said to me "I'll turn it in if you
say so but otherwise I ain't. I said, "Well I think you should
turn it in." She said, "Well, I am going t o tell you right now.
These people are always talking about getting rid of you and this
and that." She said , "You're the only pastor that has been here
for years that lets us know anything about the business of a
church and that's what they are mad at you about. So you ' d
better let us he lp you straighten it out if you want us to ' cause
they don ' t think anything about you." I said , "Well , I don ' t
know. " I kept thinking about it. I said, "Well , let me think,
let me pray over it. 1I If I run into a problem now and can ' t get
77
an answer, I said , "Let me pray over i t. " So it so happened
that Pri tchard sent my good friend Stewart around there to tell
me "go a r ound there and tell F. L. to make them women turn that
money in. " He was trying t o avoi d the battle too. He was a
battler. I sent Stewart back and I said , "Wel l , te l l him, if I
can ' t make them turn in report s as board l eaders , I won ' t make
the women t urn the money in ." I t came up at the r i ght t i me when
I was trying to get an answer. I was mostly l eaning towards
havi ng her to turn the money i n. I wanted the women to turn
the i rs i n. I shoul dn ' t be maki ng them [the women] do something
when I can ' t make t hem [the Boar d members ] do anything. So ,
Pritchard was creating us a battl e . So then Si ster Bennett asked
me again , she sai d , "Do you want me to turn the money i n . " I
sai d , "No, j ust hold it." So they got mad as the devil about
that . I final l y had a boar d meeting and some of those fe l lows
who real l y knew I was r ight but they had been al l owing them to e
the spokesmen all of the time .
INTERVI EWER : Deacons?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Deacons and trustees . We had t he
meeting and Pri tchard was the cheerleader. "We ain 't gonna have
no preacher running thi s church . No . We don ' t want no women
running it. We ' re gonna run it. " Almost a cheerleading secti on .
Fi nally one of the fellows who had been real with me and was up
against what t hey were saying wound up cursing the board . I
said , "Well , that does i t , I am ready to go home now. Now it
won ' t be this .. " Prit chard said, "Whatcha goi ng to do about
78
it?" I said, "If this is your level of re l igion, the church has
to decide whether they want me as a pastor or you . " "You better
get with us. " I said, "No , you get with me. " "You ' re a young
man . " I said, " I 'm a young man but I am still pastor of this
church and that ' s what you can ' t accept . " I was willi ng even
then to go , but I saw what was corning and couldn ' t be avoided.
So , Pritchard and I guess what really made me f i ghti ng mad, I
am challenged to do something -- I know I compromise - - and in
that meeting - - and then besides that, here's what really
I started off at $150.00 and now I am making $ 180.00 . So the
superi ntendent of the school gave me a job where I was making
$234.00 a month. They couldn't see that . "Yeah," they said,
"part t i me pastor, full time pay. " I said , "Whatcha gonna do
about it? Besides , what do you want me to do , baby sit you al l .
I can ' t teach you anything." So , one fellow named Danton, who
had long fingers, he was kind of a dull fellow but he was nice.
Tall , big feet , and he said to me in that meeting, "You are gonna
stop teaching , or else! " I sai d, "How did you say that? " He
sai d, "I said you ' re gonna stop teachi ng , or else. " I said , "You
just gave me my answer . " Dr. Grimes , Chairman of the Board , he
was just a nice fe llow -- he never did argue too much. He said ,
"You got that?" I said , "Yeah , I ' ll take the "e l se" whatever it
is . I am going to sit in the boat and you a l l rock it . If you
can sink the boat, then me and God wi l l go down together. They
said , "you better get with us." I sai d, "After thi s , you get
with me . I will not try to get with you all any more. Because
79
you all are wrong. You will not have the authority to t ell all
the other folks what to do. You can recommend to them. Neither
will you have authority to tell me what to do and what not to do.
You can suggest. I said , "Now the only name on that sign up
there i s mine . If I say it 'is' it will take a vote of the
church to say it 'ain't', not you. I don't intend to harass you
but I am going to tell you like it is. You all have just gone
too far too long." "Yeah , under Thomas, we had that rule under
Thomas." We don't have to bring nothing to the church. And the
climax -- here i s the climax . They were fixin ' to build a
project right there around the church . . . . And First Baptist
had a lot that they had to sell. [And while] I was gone to the
convention, two or three of them got together, not the whole
board, and decided to sell the lot. Government was going to take
it anyhow. So Pritchard tells me when I got back, "Ah, F. L.,
(we hadn't been talking too much] the government's gonna take
that lot. Me and Brown and [name indistinguishable] and Ben got
together and that is what we decided." I sai d , "Who al l voted? "
"Well, just me and Brown and Ben." I said, "Can the three of you
sell the church property? " "Well, we couldn't do nothin' but
accept." I said, "It takes the church to accept it, not you."
"Well, why they got to . . (went off into . . . ) . " I said,
"They got to do it because its their property ." "Well, if you
don I t say nothin' about it." I said , "I'm not going to let it go
like this. The church has to make the decision." That was the
kind of a s ituation I had. So it was gathering and gathering
80
storm. It was during this time that we went to Oklahoma to a
meeting. I had gotten to where I couldn't hardly sit in a chair
-- just tense all the time. When I would go to bed at night it
looked like somebody just springing me. I waited on this train.
I think this is when I prayed real deep experience with God.
INTERVIEWER: Before you get to this, let me ask you a question.
How was Ruby feeling about all this turmoil in the church. Did
she worry about it too?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: We didn't talk too much about it. She
knew what was going on. I would just briefly talk to her. I
never did really ask her -- Ruby always saw me as a strong
person. She was with me. I told her a few people were talking
but just don't get your opinion into it. People say "You said."
So I was on this train at night. People joke and talk loud on
the train. I remember about 2:00 in the morning. Everybody had
gone to sleep. I couldn't go to sleep for nothing. I went and
sat down in a chair and tried to go to sleep. I got up and went
back between the cars where there is a section where you can
stick your head out. So I decided I would stick my head out and
look at what we were passing. It was very dark. I couldn't see
anything. I stuck my head out in the wind but the train was
going so fast it cut water out of your eyes and I had to get back
in. It was right there -- I think that was the time I really
prayed from the situation of actually needing God. It wasn't
because I was afraid. It was because I wanted to be sure I was
right and that He was with me. I said to Him, almost these
81
words, "Lord, I never asked you to send me to First Baptist." I
had two little churches. I was doing fine and all of a sudden ,
here I am. It looked like nothing was going right and I said "I
realize of all of your servants who really need your will had to
suffer. They had to actually suffer. All through the Old
Testament and the New. " I said to Him, "I'm willing to do that.
I am not asking you to relieve the suffering. But I am asking
you to fix me so I don't worry so much." While I was yet
standing back there, look like somebody just reach down and
lifted that whole train off me. The weight left. I knew
instantly what it was. I went back and sat down and went to
sleep just like that. It was the third time I tried. So I went
back horne to Selma. I had a little revival to do in Camden,
Alabama , which is 3

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Holding.Institution

Birmingham Public Library (Alabama)

Full Text

This is an interview with the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth,
October 27 and 28, 1988, at Greater New Light Baptist Church in
Cincinnati , Ohio . This interview was conducted by Andrew Manis.
INTERVIEWER : Reverend Shuttlesworth , picking up on some of the
early background of your life , we have talked about your
relationships with your stepfather and with your mother. I
wonder if you can give me some insight into your relationships
with your brothers and sisters. Generally, which brothers or
sisters you were close to , how they may have i~fluenced your life
and anecdotes that you remember about growing up with your
brothers and sisters. Mischievous kinds of things. Just
basically what you remember about growing up with your brothers
and sisters .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, you must remember we were raised
out in the country, it was called then, although it is right on
the edge of Birmingham now . We did farming . My stepfather had
me and my brother who was five years younger, Eugene, and my
cousin Tom (my mother ' s sister ' s son who stayed with us quite a
bit) to get up on the road many times 5 : 00 o'clock in the morning
and go to the field which is now at the edge of Birmingham in
Homewood . I used to throw papers. I carried papers during the
afternoon until I got a bicycle. Then I rode the bicycle. My
relationship with my brothers and sisters was I guess you would
call it hectic but normal in those days -- we were playful. We
had fights as brothers and sisters always did. We were
1
disciplined . I was qui te mischievous. I found things to get
into . I wasn't mean and evil just devilish. I remember and
you ' re tal king about mischi evous things , I used have them give me
their meat skins . We had to come to the table and eat together.
That was one thing my stepfather who I consider to be quite mean,
(he wasn ' t re ligious at all -- as I've think I've said) but we
always ate together. I ' d have them pass under the edge of the
table meat ski ns . I ' d have a big pile of meat in my plate . My
stepfather used to get on me and curse me out about that . I
would encourage him by saying "This Sister or Eul a Mae or so and
so broke the record, meaning that they would try to give me their
meat." I remember my stepfather would always -- I don ' t see why
we didn ' t have indigestion and all of our digesti ve systems all
messed up when we were kids because he would always find the
ideal time to fuss , at eating time. I remember his index finger
was k i nd of curved and he ' d be pointing at you but he would be
pointing over here. Papa would always help the plates and he had
no compunction using curse words. He woul d always tell my sister
to fix her plate that she woul d get the wing of the chicken
"because that little heifer likes to fly " - - run from her mamma
when get ting beaten and everythi ng . So he ' d give her the wing. I
liked the drumstick . He would call me -- my eyes were quite
clear at this time and his favorite word for me was "whi te eyed
hound . " He was always making some threat , fixing my plate now,
"You white-eyed hound, I 'm going to beat the hell out of him" or
"I got hell up my sleeve for you ." Eugene , my brother , he a l ways
2
had a large head . His head was large for his body . He would
always call him a "big head hound." INTERVIEWER: This was just
playful?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, he'd be meaning it. You couldn ' t
say anything back to him. I wish I could have grabbed him. But
we were teenagers . He married my mamma when I was about two. My
older sister and I, Cleola whole, but the rest of them were his
children , Eugene and the other seven . We were all raised up
together. But anything he had to say would come out at the
table. That was our usual bill of fare.
INTERVIEWER: This was generally the one place the whole family
was together where it would come out?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH : Oh , yeah. I remember my mother was the
slowest cook in the world. Many times when we would come in from
the fields , she would have to cook in the afternoon . She never
did know how to rush cooking . I guess we were hungry, which made
it seem slower . She'd have to make a fire in the coal or wood
stove . We'd have to pick up coal some time. That was our style.
As kids we were playful. We would always be picking at each
other and play with other kids who would come. I remember my
sister (I was home the other day and I was teasing her about it)
we remember things we did way back there sixty years ago, a long
time ago. My sister, for instance , -- Eugene would like to play
with the dog a lot . He has a scar on his head now. He was
playing with the dog and slid off the end of t he step and cut his
head on a rock . Whenever he'd see blood he'd go crazy anyway.
3
We tease him about that and get in a fight many times teasing him
about such incidents. My grandmother (my mother ' s father's
mother) stayed with us for a while or either she would corne to
see us. I never saw my grandmother ' s legs because they wore long
dresses . We loved her but we were afraid of her. I think in
modern times grandparents were -- I mean if grandparents were at
the horne it would be a lot more stabilizing effort. My sister,
we were sitt ing out in the back yard. They made us keep the yard
clean. We had chickens and things. We'd have to sweep the yard
some times. Eugene had come out of the house and was asking my
sister about the broom. And I remember grandmamma sitting there
with her legs crossed in the rocking chair. Sitting outdoors.
Gene had asked sister for the broom two or three times. nSister,
where is the broom? " Sister just like a playful kid, " I ate it
up." Grandmamma never sai d anything. Eugene asked her two or
three more times. "Sister, I said, where is the broom?" She
enjoyed him not knowing where it was. "I ate it up . It After
while grandmamma said , "If you et it up , you better sheeet it
out." She had an old hickory , and kept a stick in her mouth,
dipped snuff. She repeated, "I said , if you ate it up , you
better sheeet it out ." Sister immediately came up with the
broom , just that quick. I remember so many things . One thing we
were always conscious of my stepfather being quite jealous of my
mother. We would note incidents about his fighting .
INTERVIEWER: Jealous of other men or?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I just think it was because she was a
4
younger woman. This is honest, I tried to go back and search my
own mind and I never saw one thing of evil import on my mother's
side . I would say that to anybody. You would too, but I l ooked
in my mind and searched. I had never seen one thing bad, but
mamma didn't have much. We was on welfare. Papa always made
liquor. We'd have plenty of people come around to buy liquor.
But I never saw any incidents -- there were always men and women
-- quite a bit, not always, but they would come by, like people
got their pay in the mines, they would come over weekends.
Several of them would come and drink and buy liquor. I only
remember my stepfather going to church with us twice in my life.
Once the preacher came and I believe that the two times that papa
finally went to church he was in jail e ither the next week or two
weeks on the liquor thing. He didn't care anything about church.
INTERVIEWER: Getting back to that jealousy with your mother .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, I think jealousy was a strong
word. She was much younger woman than he was . My mother was 21
years older than I was. He died when I was my older childhood
when I was 18 . She would have been only in thirties. She never
did have a lot of clothes. She was always faithful. They had
the beginnings of what they called adult education , night school,
which was right up around the curve from our house, less than a
block . She would go to night school. As I recall , he wouldn't
go to school but he would be gone just about the time for her to
get out. I remember he had a T Model Ford that carne to a point
at the end. He had a fender that was kinda loose and squeaked.
5
During the time when we were young he had some skid poles about
the size of my little finger in the back and I never knew what
they were for until he and mamma were in a verbal and physical
battle one day, and she asked him what he was going to do with
those poles. Then she said "Oh, you got 'em to whip my ass with
them?" He was short winded , and when they would get in a fight
or tussle he couldn ' t trust her long because he was very short
with her. His hands were twice as big as mine . He had very big
hands . He would slap her. He ' d make her mad as fire. He'd have
to either hold her or get away from her. Because she would
overcome him. I remember one time he hauled off and slapped her
on the porch and ran down the steps and went across the yard
about 30 feet and stepped up into the chi cken fence. I t was
quite high. He had d i fficulty- -he was getting old . Mamma was
climbing and hitting him so bad clawing him. He was about out of
wind. He had to stand and hold one of the posts in the chicken
yard . He was trying to get mamma off of him. She was clawing
allover his head. They were both using language , you know. So
he remembers that he looked down from our back yard and he could
see across the street . He saw a lady narned Maggie Tolbert. He
said, "Look at Maggie!" He was trying t o shame her for
continuing to fight. Mamma said , "Damn Maggie , you slapped me,
you SOB. I 'm going to get you." We remember all of that . We
had a kind of a boisterous life. It was not a thing of love in
the sense of talking very kind to your children and never said
stern words. We had to work. I had to wash clothes with the
6
girls and other things. I had t o get them clean. Looked to me
like they were c l ean but mamma found more dirt. Mamma had an
unus ual way of s l apping me right in t he eye. I would see a ll the
stars you 1r e suppose to see at night in the day time. She was
very stern. She was religious . She saw to it that we went to
church. Never a questi on of "are you going to chur ch" like these
people ask their children now . The biggest probl em was getting
up and getting our c lothes on on time.
INTERVIEWER: Do you ever feel any inconsistency between the more
than occasi onal violence that happened between your parents with
your mothe r dishing out a good bit of it as well, inconsistency
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: We ll she would attack him. I did
understand later on that he had one of h i s buddies down there .
His buddy's sister lived with him and he was messin ' a r ound with
her but I was t oo young to understand all that then. Named
Louise, and mamma would be , she might start fuss ing at him about
tha t o r something. This was one occas ion , one problem that they
had, as I remember.
INTERVIEWER: Do you have a sense of an i ncons i stency that you
may have felt to the extent where the l anguage that was being
used during these arguments and fights and the occasi onal
violence didn ' t match up with the insistence on church going?
Did that seem hypocritical to you?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Not then it didn't. Because that was a
way o f life .
7
INTERVIEWER: How do you feel about it now and how have your
feelings changed about that over the years , if they have.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: We accepted that as children. We had
to. It was a way of life. I guess I certainly appreciate her
being churchy. I've been churchy all my life. She brought me up
that way. I saw her as being more persecuted than anything
else. Normally they would be at it, talking l oud o r something
when we were kids. Being there sometimes in the day, it wasn't
every day -- don't get that impression. But this was a general
part of periodically having to say and enough to say that we
didn't have a life removed from vulgar words, or vain words. Our
life included that. Of course as children we stood out of the
way. I remember, let ' s see, when I was -- I always wanted to -­I
had in my mind I wanted to do something to him because he would
beat mamma. And so when I got up and was a teenager about 14, I
remember my oldest sister [Cleola] and Eugene decided to wanted
work out a plan to beat his butt one day. He was more aware of
it than we were. I remember before, what really brought this
into my mind was that my mother had one eye for a very long time.
I think it was in the thirties while they were fighting. She had
a broom handle. Now I saw this. He had a chair. He'd use it.
He wouldn't throw a chair but he had the chair. She hit him.
I'm l ooking at this. The broom slithered and that thing went in
her eye. I am l ooking at this as a boy . Course she accused him
of knocking her eye out. They were fighting. That chair poked
in her eye and she lost her eye. We always said he was the cause
8
of this . We a lways wanted to find a way, and I got o l d enough,
we called it "sassing" then . I said we'd get back at him but I
stayed out of his way . I guess over a period of months--this was
after mamma had been in the hospital and got her eye fixed--she
just had one eye after that. We decided we were going to grab
him. My sister had a broom. [Laughs.] My sister always had a
broom. And Eugene -- I was in the kitchen doing the cooking or
something. Papa come in and I deliberately said something to get
him mad at me. Sister and Gene were going to come up behind on
the other side and grab him. We were all going to grab him
together . I don't know what we were going to do. But the
strategy was that we were going to grab him, but you got to stay
out of the way of him because he could knock you across this
room. I was cooking and I said "Yeah, you knocked mamma 's eye
out . You ain ' t gonna get away with it!" "Whatcha gonna do about
it?" "We 're gonna do something ." Youngsters have no idea of
what they are saying. I was indicating , but I was more verbal I
guess than I wanted to be but I was really talking so I could
claim his attention while sister and Gene came up from behind.
Then I was going to directly confront him. The old man was very
conscious of what was going on. It is amazing how young people
think older people don't understand their minds . They don ' t have
to be educated . But they can understand you far more than you
understand yourself. So we were in the kitchen and dining room.
There was a hall. So you could circle around the porch, go back
through the hall, come back around through the dining room to the
9
kitchen and make a little circle. So sister was going to be
coming through the dining room and Gene was coming from the porch
into the kitchen where he and I was. I remember well . . . but
there was never any physical contact , but it was intended . So I
told him, "Yeah, the fact is you don ' t like me." He said some
word . I don't know what he said . He was quite alert. So
finally I got right up in his face and sister was coming out of
the dini ng room with the broom and Eugene was coming in the back
door. Papa waited until we got dead right there, "What the hell
you going to do with that broom?" Sister went that way and
Eugene went that way , and there I was standing. I didn ' t say any
more to hi m.
INTERVIEWER: That was the end of it?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: That was the end of it but we had
intended to confront him and grab him and really beat his butt
that day.
INTERVIEWER: One last question about your parents relationship
and then I want to move onto another subject. You said you
recall a good bit of the turmoil between them . Can you remember
moments of tenderness between them?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Oh yes, yes , that old man was very fond
of mamma. I don ' t remember him buying her many clothes. I don ' t
think mamma at anyone time had more than two dresses. I
remember during arguments I remember her saying "you want me to
stay naked . " I remember them sitting there talking and carrying
on. They never did play over us sexually. But I remember he
10
would pass by mamma and grab her breast . He'd call that his
jelly couch. I don't know what he meant by that. But I think
they were close. She respected him -- she called him Mr .
Shuttlesworth. She never did call him Bill or William. They
would sit down and talk and quite often in front of us about
various things. But we kids were taught at that time to fear
their parents. It wasn ' t a matter that we could sit up and talk
with them about everything like kids do now. When other adults
come around, what conversation we hear we got slip and hear or
something like that. When grown folks talked , you were not to be
seen . Basically that is the way I was raised up.
INTERVIEWER: What would you consider to be the two or three most
important events that happened to your family as a whole during
your boyhood , in adolescence that had a lasting effect?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I always remember my mother. And its
because I am old enough to see it now in a better light, but I
think a lot of what I got basically from my mother. She always
took and made much out of -- she was never downcast. She never
had a whole lot of money. Yet I would see papa, during his
lifetime, people could count out $200 or $300 on the bed. He
sold liquor you know. I donlt remember him doing a whole lot
with it. I remember riding my bicycle to Bessemer for years to
pay $5.00 on a $150.00 held borrowed to do something around the
house. That was for years . That man while he was alive I
think for five years. When he died I asked the man what the
balance of it was. He could have paid it out . I think the man
11
told me I could give $5 . 00 more and he gave me the note. Am I
getting off your question?
INTERVI EWER: I am looking for things that . .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I remember my mother , we had to walk
across the mountain maybe four or five miles to the commissary .
In the early days he worked in the mine . The commissary store
was where we would get our groceries. On the other side there
was a good wil l store wh i ch was a l ittle closer but we didn ' t go
there a lot. I remember mamma had a $20.00 bill . This always
stuck in my mind. On the way to get something she suddenly began
looking for it and couldn ' t find it. This was after papa died or
just before . I l ooked for her to begin crying because $20 . 00 at
that time was l ike a thou sand now. She looked and looked, turned
things i nside out , al l over her clothes and purse. Then she
said, "Well , let ' s go . " I finally said "Don ' t you feel like
cryi ng." She said, "Well, son, you can ' t mi ss what you never
had . " We turned around and went back home . It was one of those
lean t imes.
INTERVIEWER: As you look back over your entire first eighteen
years up t hrough high school, could you i sol ate events that you
think had the most infl uence on y ou and what you became as an
adult?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Church.
INTERVIEWER : I am talking about events , particular things that
happened . I know of your mother ' s influence through the church ,
maybe some incidents that illustrate how they influenced you.
12
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I ' d have to say I am not sure I had a
lot of spect acular events i n my life . I had a lot of thi ngs that
happened . Not hing I recall ?
INTERVIEWER : The kind of events that you think, as you l ook back
on them now , shaped your personality, made you different?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well , I was always very apt. Although
my mot her was endearing , it was in a way that was coercive. I
could tell she appreciat ed what I was , but she knew that if she
didn ' t control my devilish tendencies, I could be a rat and turn
the wr ong way . She was dear to me and yet quite violent in many
ways. If I got a whippin' outside I'd have to get another one
when I came home. And I used to get quite a few in school during
the day . But I guess my life was one where more than something
knocking me into , more than something happening to me , and I got
this philosophy from it -- I accepted I know I always wanted
to be either a doctor or a preacher ever since I can remember .
In my lifetime I wanted to be either a doctor or a preacher . I
guess I remember all the adul ts woul d be sayi ng to me , "Boy, you
are goi ng t o real l y make something out o f yourself . II That was a
general thing . Everybody could see something in me. I remember
when I went to school, in the seventh grade I had a photostatic
memory . I read a fifteen - page oration . I think I read it three
times and then recited i t, just like that. So , people took a
special i nterest in me , al t hough I was ter ribly bad. I was
devili sh ; I would pick at people . The teacher stood me in the
corner one day for talking . While I was there , all the kids were
13
watching , I ran the clock up . She turned around and I 'm looking
in the corner. I ran the clock up. I d i d it too much . So that
she rang the bell for our d i smissal and it just happened that
another school teacher came up about the time we was getting
ready to get out . He sai d "what's wrong?" She said, "it ' s time ,
the clock shows its time to go home." It was 45 minutes before
time. She had to call everybody back in and I must have gotten
at l east three whippings because she wanted to make me -- she
would t ake me back to the cloak room. Teachers would make you
take your underwear down. Every time I would come out I would
smile . I wasn ' t gonna let ' em see me crying. So I would come
out smiling. The teacher would say "Oh , its funny to you . Let ' s
go back. " So we took at least six trips to that cloak room .
After while the teacher just got red. Whippin' me. But the
strap was taking its toll , some of the licks hitting in the same
place. On the last trip I thought I'd do something , so I put
spit on my eyes so she would think I was crying . I was burning
behind but wasn't gonna l et them gals see . That ' s the kind of
the person. Not mean but just provocative . It had to come out
some way. As I look at my life now, when I was in Birmingham ,
that was the time I could look go to the telephone book and dial
a hundred numbers without looking in the te l ephone book . I had a
photostatic memory. I could memorize things . I could remember.
I had t his ability even in mass meetings - - I'd just take this
step - I didn ' t have to take steps one through ten. I can see
how God was preparing me . But I had no special incident of my
14
mother or even in church that would make me think that this fixed
my life towards that -- although I have always honored and
revered the idea of God -- I had, as I said, my mother ' s good
influence . Our teacher, they had classes together in the same in
the room in the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth grade. First
through sixth grade. Professor Ramsey was a good influence. But
no more momentous , no cataclysmic effort that caused me to be
either religious or not .
INTERVIEWER: You've mentioned to me in the past concerning your
conversion or joining the church, that it was not a dramatic kind
of emotional experience in that you kind of grew into it having
been in church all your life . Still there must have been some
kind of feelings or thoughts that led you to decide now is the
time to join the church. Can you describe
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I think there was more in being in a
religious climate and emotional atmosphere . You must remember
there was revival in the country back then. It was an all
engrossing type thing . Even though you go to the field to work
in the day time, you think about revival at night .
INTERVIEWER: So your decision to, do you call it joining the
church, or being converted or is it both the same?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: It could be both .
INTERVIEWER: What was the terminology you used then? You may
have different ways of talking about it now since you
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well , it just came in there. We had
morning service every once in a while. Way back there. When I
15
decided, I just thought it was the thing to do . Nothing earth
shaki ng , no knock down, drag out . I went up and gave the
preacher my hand.
INTERVIEWER : This was during the reviva l ?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Oh yeah. At the same time I wasn ' t
turned off by a lack of spiritual meetings that had people doing
earthly things. For instance , right down below us were the
sanct i fied folks. They had beating drums and everything and
sometimes we would go . We lived right -- well, we could sit on
our porch and hear that . I remember once they had a sanctified
meeting down there and there was a two-story building. The white
man who owned the buil d i ng in that area , the revenue man came out
there one day and threw out about fift y drums of liquor . They
were down there beati ng the drums and a l l that stuff under that.
Even that didn ' t turn me off . Though I ' ve seen people who
claimed to be very hol y, very righteous, and I would see about
them that they were utterly human. I would see things about them
that we r e ug l y involving sex and other t hings. But I never was
turned off. That didn ' t really make me irreligious because I saw
those t h i ngs.
INTERVIEWER: Why do you think you responded to it that way?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH : That I didn ' t turn off?
INTERVI EWER: Right.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Number one , it wasn ' t my privilege to be
turned off . I had to go to church . But I wanted to believe .
I ' ve never had a rebellious attitude about either goi ng to church
16
or not going to church. It was a thing I wanted to do. Being as
apt as I was , it was a thi ng that fit into my nature , my
character, my disposi tion . Though I was devilish, I was very
religious. Even when I was young . I would lead devotions, sing
solos, do everything. Recite. I always learned my recitation
from things.
INTERVIEWER: You were baptized in the AME Church?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I was sprinkled. Christened .
INTERVIEWER: As an infant?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Not as an infant , no. Let ' s see , how
old was I . I am trying to remember. I might have forgotten. But
I can say I was raised up . It seems to me that I was real small
when they sprinkled water on me .
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember when this revival was , about how
old you were when you joined the church in that revival meeting?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I couldn't have been over eight.
INTERVIEWER: What happened in your church after you joined the
church? Did they put you in a special kind of class or anything
for new converts?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No , but you must remember I was always
encouraged and after I joined the church some of the people I
remember l ike Mrs. Hines who always led the devotion and I always
thought she was such a saintly person. There was her daughter
named Jane Emma who was older than I was. She was in love with
some preacher. Jane Emma must have had about ten kids and hasn ' t
got married yet until this day . I could understand the
17
contradictions but it never affected me from even revering her
mother. There were always men and women said to me that God had
a special job for me . You are smart enough to stay out of
trouble. I was always encouraged. I never was encouraged to do
wrong.
INTERVIEWER: Did the adults who were encouraging you in this
way , did they do this to all the kids?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH : I think generally so but I always , as I
recal l , they would find a way to be encouraging where I was
concerned.
INTERVIEWER: Let me ask this. The AME Church has a long
tradition of encouraging its members to work hard and to be
educated and try to advance themselves. Do you think growing up
in the AME CHurch had any particular influence on you as, say if
you had grown up in some other church , such as Baptist as you
became later? Did the AME background have any particular,
special influence on you do you think?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I guess the reading of hymns , the AME
emphasized hymns more than other churches.
INTERVIEWER: Did the mi nisters or the Sunday School teachers
talk about Richard Allen?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Not a whole lot. We would get that
generall y but I am not aware of any special sermon on Richard
Allen or the great Methodist ministers. Maybe there would be a
general AME conference to which I would go once in a while. My
mother was not a great church woman to the point that she went to
18
all these things and I woul dn ' t have to be there either. She
would go to her church but I don ' t remember her too much going to
conferences. Course t hat was at the time that the famous Bi shop
E. Ward Nichols [Indistinguishable.] would hold things at our
church j ust like at o t her s and we would get some of the
historical perspecti ve but I wasn't drilled in the respect
"Here ' s a b i shop that you should hear him ... and thi s and
that." No , I was j ust -- and I say , if you ' re asking me , except
for the ritual that the Methodist had -- they were litanious
[ l iturgical] and I guess to that extent I was better off than if
I had been brought up in the Baptist church where it is more
loose .
INTERVI EWER : Did you ever have a sense of pri de i n the sense of
being AME since AMEs were the first independent Black
denomination?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: NO, that did not come into my being. I
knew we were different f r om the Baptist church and we woul d go to
the Baptist chur ch on Sundays when we were not engaged a t o u r
church. I think we were second and fourth [Sundays ) ; the Baptist
[had servi ces] on the f i rst and third, I believe . In the Baptist
church , I think I menti oned to you a man named Jack Hawthor ne,
who was a deacon down there , r ea l tall and l anky. Hi s feet were
excepti onal ly long for h i s body. He was a very nice person , very
encour aging to younger people . I would go down there just to
hear h i m pray . He was t alking to the Lord and he would say "Do
thou have mercy. " I liked his devotions. But we knew that they
19
were a different church than ours but we were all were the same
community except they were Baptists and we were Methodists. They
baptized; we sprinkled.
INTERVIEWER: What stands out in your memory about your high
school years?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: We would ride the bus. We started out
going to Rosedale I think and then they transferred us for a few
months to Wenonah, then we went back to Rosedale where I finally
graduated. Well, I always liked football. I COUldn't catch a
baseball so I never cared too much for baseball. I remember
liking football and I wanted to get on the team . One boy , light
skinned boy, fell and broke his arm. I can see his arm -- just
contorted. The only way I got a uniform was when he took his
off. I picked it up and I got on the team that way. In high
school, I was very apt . It was not difficult for me to see
through things . To read and discern from the page almost
instantaneously. I don't remember having to sit down and ponder
over many lessons until I got in college. Even there , the
teachers , Professor B. M. Montgomery at Rosedale were very
differential. When I say differential I mean about the way they
encouraged me. Not make any special privilege for me . I would
always be cautioned about being mischievous or talkative. I was
that way all my life . I remember, talking about high school,
related to the system we lived in . The bus driver killed a man .
Not in front of us. I remember he had some white person go down
and say he was a good nigger and he got off. I guess you store
20
all these things in your mind. But there was nothing you could
do about it. It was during the high school years that I was put
in jail . They got us for the distillery. But we weren 't
distilling . I think the people up above us named Satersfield
It was during that time when Newton Hubbard came out and forced
us to tell him where we hid the -- papa had died then. I r emember
that and so it was not too long since. So I had to be eighteen.
No, let's see, he died when I graduated . Yeah, that's right, I
was eighteen or nineteen, going toward nineteen. And I married
when I was nineteen. So we got there and my lawyer, Adams , got
us probation. Eugene was judged a juvenile. He never did have
to go to court. But I was put on probation . I remember the word
"probation ," listening t o Adams talk . I remember also soon after
I got into the Civil Rights thing the Ku Klux Klan looked at my
record and found out I had been a -- what do you call it -- a
bootlegger. Had a thing out, you know. It didn't make any
difference but I never tried to deny it in my life. We weren't
caught running no liquor or nothing, just . .
INTERVIEWER: You mentioned getting on the football team. Did
you get to play much?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: After that, yes.
INTERVIEWER: What position did you play?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I played left tackle I believe it was.
I wasn ' t afraid to tackl e anybody. I was very swift.
INTERVIEWER: How many years did you play?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Maybe two. I don't remember the last
21
year . Might have. But I wouldn't have been in it ..
INTERVIEWER: Other than going to school and the jobs you had,
you had high school jobs and you mentioned riding your bicycle.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Not anything spectacular until I met my
wife .
INTERVIEWER: Looking back over both your boyhood and your
adolescence , can you think of any outstanding incidents in which
you had encounters with white people? Adults or young people.
And were they positive or negative encounters?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I didn't have too much contact with
white people . The white people I encountered were the men that,
when the superintendent of education came out, supervisor, they
cal l ed him then. One time we went over to work these people's
lawn in Shades Mountain. We had to regard white people in a
different light. We had to regard their status different. I
never felt the sense that I was any less than they were but I
knew that society demanded that I be different. I think it was
in the courts the two or three times I went and I went to Joe's
trial -- this bus driver. I saw the situation in which it was
very good if you were white in our system. Although I wasn't
inflamed as such. I knew that the white people if they wanted
you to have a job, the white people could recommend that you
could get a job . For just a very little while after I got my
bicycle I was a drugstore delivery boy in Edgewood for a while
not too far from Oxmoor . I would go to white people ' s homes but
I've never had a whole lot of intimate contact, as I recall now,
22
with white people. Especially white younger boys and girls.
Except I might work in yards or help clean up or something. I
knew people who worked with white people.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember ever having any conversations with
a white adult or a white person your age? Even short exchanges
of conversation?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: You mean when I was young?
INTERVIEWER: Any time between boyhood and high school
graduation.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Not too much because even then Negro
teams didn't play white schools at that time. I am trying to
recall -- there just wasn't a whole lot of contact with white
children or white boys and girls.
INTERVIEWER: I don't suppose anyone could have done what you did
in Civil Rights without feeling a sense of righteous anger about
I don't mean in the sense of wanting to strike back and hurt
whites. But a sense of righteous indignation about the system>
When did that start? Did it start early in you?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No, I accepted the system as it was.
I'm never surprised as I think about it now how, not docile, but
how acceptable Blacks, Negroes took things without rising up and
how many times abusive the system was. I guess even at the time
I got married when I was nineteen, I worked around white people
who had charge of everything. In the old Southern Club Building,
I had to sterilize needles for doctors, examine welfare patients
and the doctor would examine people. I would sterilize needles
23
and a few other little chores there at the Southern Club. That's
where I met Ruby. I always regarded the white people and what
they did as totally apart from us. It was a thing that you
accepted. I don't think at that time I ever felt aggrieved to
the point of where I wanted to hit a white man. Do you
understand what I am saying?
INTERVIEWER: I don't mean to the point of your wanting to strike
a . . .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: You mean about the system. Well I
always knew the system was wrong. You must remember I went to
Mobile. I even worked, before I went to Mobile -- we married in
'41 until '43 -- I worked my first job at the [Alpha Portland]
cement plant. There was this deacon, I can't think of his name,
I might have told you before, who had been there sixteen years
working in the cement plant and he was making $.52 an hour. I
made $.54 an hour hooking cars down in the quarry for the man who
put it up and dump it and crush the rock. The old man who was
the assistant named, named Ewell, when he would come around,
these Negroes would be so nervous until it was like rats getting
out of the way of cats. One day we were shoveling up something
maybe something had broken down. The quarry was down so I was
up there moving around on a different job. Old man Ewell had
several of us doing different things. At this time we were
shoveling something. When Old Man Ewell wasn't there, we wasn't
rushing with that shoveling. When Old Man Ewell came around,
when we saw him coming way around the cement thing and them guys
24
were shoveling three t i mes to my one almost. "There ' s Mr .
Ewell. " I just kept on what I was doing . Old Man Ewell came up
there and he stood there. He didn ' t say anything , just looked.
They were doing almost 2 1/2 to my one . I just kept doing i t
like I was doing it be f ore he got there. "Come on , you are
mighty slow there ." I sai d , "There ' s the man , let him say
something. " He has sense enough to know you a i n ' t doin ' t his
when he ' s not here . I kept on doing what I was doing. Real ly ,
after whil e Old Man Ewell wa l ked away . He d i dn ' t say nothing to
none of them. I t always seemed to me a contradi cti on . I was
ready that day to defy him . I said, "I 'm gonna do what I do
cause I thi nk thi s is the way I ought to do it . Besides , l et the
man tell me what to do." He stood there looking. They were
still sweating down. I f he said one word I was ready t o
challenge h i m if he had sai d anything. I probably woul d have got
fired . I went to Mobile and some of my conversation there
brought out some of t he r acist . Ol d Man Ewell was tough.
He would c urse and he though t we were scared. Bu t t he job I had
in Mobi le driving a t r uck . .
INTERVIEWER : Before you get to Mobile , I want you to tell me a
little bit more about Ruby . You eluded to your meeting her.
Basically I would like for you to tell me how you met, your
courtship , personality , you know , just talk about your wife a
while.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH : Ruby was on the heavy side. I liked
heavy people . I d i dn ' t like light skinned girls fo r some reason.
25
I guess I figured they would call me Black and I'd have to do
something. Ruby was brown skinned and had long wavy hair that
came down to her shoulders. We just met there at the Sout hern
Club which was the old YMCA Building that they called the
Southern Club where they had social things . The doctors
people examined people to see if they were able to work. If they
couldn ' t work they woul d go in and get examined and be declared
unable to work and al l that kind of stuff. That is the part I
remember because that is the part I was in. We met and just
talked. I remember once or twice I walked home with her. Just
pushed my bicycle. I guess when Ruby
INTERVIEWER: You were about eighteen or seventeen?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Yeah , I was eighteen when I graduated
so it had to be after that. Between eighteen and nineteen . I
think I met her in May. I hadn't been there too long . I was on
the Y. Because we married in October ' 41 just before the
Japanese attack. She had been -- her uncle and aunt both of whom
are dead now -- she had been sent to school at Selma University
where I went later. And then Tuskeegee. Ruby had -- if she had
had a whole lot more training, she would have had to have done to
be a registered nurse. Some how or another she just didn ' t want
to go back. She would rather get married .
INTERVIEWER: Did she grow up in Birmingham?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Yeah , she lived in the West End .
INTERVIEWER: What was her childhood?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: She was an AME. Her "parents" went to
26
Thurgood [CME Church]. I don't know too much about her
adolescence . I only met her in May and we married in October. I
did go t o her church , Thurgood CME , where her aunt went once or
twice before we were married. But she was either going to make
up her mind to go back to school or get married. She didn ' t want
to go back to school. Basically that was a lot toward my
decision to marry, because I liked her. I don ' t think I was
deeply i n love with her.
INTERVIEWER : Did you have any girlfriends before her?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH : In the country people do . I was over
seventeen and a half when I had my first incident with sex. It
wasn ' t like kids do now. I was seventeen and a half near
eighteen and I married when I was nineteen. So there wasn ' t a
whole lot of special girlfriends. I was very well liked by all
the girls .
INTERVIEWER: So you dated around before this.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Yeah , and the girl I thought I was going
to marry was named Nellie . I didn't know nothing about courting.
I walked from Oxmoor to Spaulding. It wasn ' t nothing to sit down
and talk. I was satisfied then. But I remember another guy by
the name of Leslie. Leslie finally married Nellie. I was
courting her and he married her. But I never touched her, never
thought about it real ly too much.
INTERVIEWER: Your courtship with Ruby was less than a year?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Oh , yeah, I met her in May and married
her in October.
27
INTERVIEWER: So you worked in the same place . What was the
standard courtship practice? Was yours a standard courtship?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: It might not have been standard to t he
extent that, well, what do you mean by standard?
INTERVIEWER: What would people your age normally
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: We would go to a movie once in a while ,
not too many times. I would go to visit her uncle ' s house. Went
to chur ch with her once or twice. I lived out in the country but
she lived in the city , and I saw her basically on the job more .
INTERVIEWER: How did t he decision come that this was the woman
you wanted to marry?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH : I liked her, I liked the way she was
built . I liked the way she was shaped. I liked her as a person
and we didn ' t even have sex until we got engaged . We got engaged
just two or three weeks before we married .
INTERVIEWER: Did you feel you were always able to talk with her?
What did you talk about during your courtship?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: General things. Nothing of great or
special importance. Her schooling , mine. She accepted me
without question . And I did her , because I liked her qui te a
bit.
INTERVIEWER: What would you say were the most significant
influences on her mi nd , growing up, until you and she were
married .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, she was in boarding school. I
take it that she had an interesting life. We never did talk too
28
much about it .
INTERVIEWER : Were you already thinking about going into the
ministry when you met her?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Yeah, I think it was after about , I
guess it began when my father died . This is the point when I was
eighteen. I hadn ' t been too bothered about the ministry before
then. I just always knew I wanted to be one . I knew I had to be
educated to be a pastor. So that in church and Sunday School my
gifts were apparent. I stayed in Oxmoor. When we moved and I
married, we moved to let me see, did we move to Birmingham first
or did we move - - I think we moved to Eighth Avenue and 24th
Street first to a six room house and we had one side . Even then
I remember having said to my presiding elder , Sims , just before I
got married, because I was around eighteen then, that I thought I
had begun wanting to be a minister. He told me at the Annual
Conference he would submit my name. Well, the next time the
conference was I had gone to Mobile . I had left the cement
plant. I left automobile training and went to Mobile. And at
this t i me I had a child. So it was after eighteen before I
indicated he told me the next year at the conference he would
take my name into the bishop and get what you call a licentiate
an exhorter ' s license , whatever they are called. I never did
keep up with that and I went on to church. But when I married in
Birmingham, here is one thing I had to keep constantly. During
that time when I married , from October and moved away from Oxmoor
into Birmingham, I still commuted to St . Matthews Church AME,
29
through the snow, through the rain. Didn l t make any difference I
still was there because I was at one time superintendent of the
Sunday School , even after I married so that I was always up in
the church. I would walk across the mountain , till the streetcar
line would corne. Then when I got my first car which was a 135 v­B
I was commuting from Birmingham then . We left Birmingham after
while to move with her aunt, Dora Greene in West End . That is
where I bought my first car , a 135 V- B. But I still stayed in
church so that it would have been the communication with the
presiding elder. But I had made myself known to them that I had
wanted to be a preacher.
INTERVIEWER : So Ruby knew pretty much from the beginning that
you had anticipated becoming a minister.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Yeah , we talked about it.
INTERVIEWER: Did she like the idea of being the wife of a
minister?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I donlt think she relished the idea .
INTERVIEWER: Why?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: In our discussions of it she, I heard
her talking to somebody that she never did relish the idea of a
minister l s wife. But i f she was going to get me , she had to be .
So it wasnlt too much of a discussion that I had to get her to
agree with what I wanted to be . That never entered into our
discussion. Of course , remember I didnlt get into the ministry
until I went to Mobile which was a little bit that next year.
Because we bought, while we was living at Aunt Dorais we bought
30
this p i ece of property. I had contracted for $750.00. It was
the f i rst lawsuit I had to get in . I had a man to move the house
because it was slightl y across another property line . And so we
lived from '41 to ' 43 in the spring and summer in our a little
bit in and a little bit at her Aunt's -- and wound up in our own
house which I years later sold. So I went t o Mobile to "make
money. "
INTERVIEWER: Before you get to that I want to stay on your wife
for a little while here . Did she gradually grow into the role of
a pastor ' s wife .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I don ' t think Ruby ever liked the idea
that I was in the ministry .
INTERVIEWER: Why didn't she like it?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well , I always was a popular individual
-- with men and women. I am not just talking about women. It
was a thing that people saw something in me and I was always
alert and vigorous . At first , it was nice. I didn ' t have any
charge like in the Movement or church. I had no special
charge where I had to be doing the mini stry , or be away from
home . We just went to church because that was in my upbringing.
I don ' t think she liked church as much as I did . Especially when
we got married and she had to go . But she would go. And
sometimes she didn ' t go , as I recall. But I had to be sick to be
out. Before I bought the car I had to catch the streetcar to
ride to where I would walk for four or five miles to be at
church. Even I remember in the snow I did that. Back to your
31
question . When we went to Mobile. Did I give you how we got
into the Baptist church?
INTERVIEWER: You have , I am going to ask you a little more about
that after while. I am still interested in the kind of
relationship that you had with your wife. Did you make all the
decisions in the home?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Concerning what?
INTERVIEWER: Well , if she made decisions were they about the
house? For example, when you moved to Mobile was that something
you decided, or did you discuss it? Was it the kind of thing you
talked about or you just kind of decided and she did whatever you
said .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH : Basically I decided but I discussed it
with her. I had the feeling definitely at this time that my
calling was definitely to go into the ministry yet I was leaving
it to go to work. I did not feel as if the $4.32 a day was what
I wanted so I got this work and I took automobile mechanics
training . This is where I met Dewi tt Murphy and Dave - - I can l t
think of Davels las name -- and we took automotive mechanics. As
I recall I took 700 and some hours of it so you can figure out
the frame of time that I was doing that. Maybe it was a period
of four or five months. But I wanted to better my condition.
But at no time did I neglect church even when I was taking that.
Dewitt and David, we were on the job and we talked about going to
Mobile , going somewhere where we could get into war work, which
would pay more money. Dave had a cousin living in Mobile, named
32
lola -- I can't think of he r l ast name . They figured we could
stay there until we got a job. So I resigned from this
automobile tra ining s ituation -- Bechtel, McComb, Parsons.
INTERVIEWER: You took this training while you were s till at
Al pha Portland?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No , I r esigned and took the train ing at
Bechtel, McComb, Parsons. It wasn ' t a year because I would have
had more than 700 hours a year. It was from February until up in
the spring. I think we went to Mobile i n the middle of July of
144, which means I had worked from 141 until 144 at the cement
plant. That June or July had to include the time I took this
training, four or five , maybe six months. We decided , I t old her
I am going t o go to Mobile and see if I can get a contract for
de fense work. Her aunt was in Birmingham so it was no problem.
We drove down there and f ortunately the ve r y next day -- we went
down there t o go to the s hipyar d . Somehow the next day we
decided to go by Br ookley Fie ld Air Force Base on our way to the
shipyard and they hired u s just like that. So I got this job
driving a truck. If I didn't have a nything to do it didn't hurt
me to drive , sitting in a truck all day just like I am s itting in
this chair. This is how I got the chance to read the Bible a
l ot. Circumstances caused me to go back and get my wife. I
don 't know how far our inte r v i ew went before. In additi on to
being alert and meeting people and people taking to me just like
this, we stayed with a ver y old man who had a porch that went all
a r ound the house as I remember. It had a little round bar ber
33
shop which was inside. It wasn't as big as this -- and in that
barber shop lived three single women whose husbands were in the
army at that time and gave them $50 a month. They all liked me.
I didn ' t go in there but a couple of times. When we would come
from work -- I think we worked from 3:30 to 11:00. I would see
them two of them. One of them just made herself obnoxious and
she was a light skinned Negro , real shapely and everything. I
didn't like -- besides she came with things to cover her bra and
real short pants. I thought women should wear dresses. She had
these short shorts on . She just flipped her lid over me . It was
nonsanctimonious. I didn't want to get involved. I remember
Dewitt and Dave -- and we would play checkers . She made herself
more obnoxious by pushing my moves on the board. I was
disgusted. She was an attractive woman but she was just pushing
herself. It wasn ' t but a day or two that I felt like I needed to
go back home to my wife. I went over and met the other two
girls. One of them I could have liked real well. But all three
of them thought I was nice. So I was telling Dewitt and Dave
about it. Dave and DeWitt were saying, "You fool. You don't
know too much about women . All of them like you. One of them
said she could go for you any day." Instead of it making me feel
like jelly, I really felt like I needed to go home and get my
wife. We had planned to stay down there and work and then I was
going to get our people down. Going back some months later.
INTERVIEWER: How long before you got there until the time Ruby
came?
34
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH : It wasn ' t over a month and a half . Less
than that maybe . The girl was so insistent, she wanted me to go
to a movie with her. I didn ' t want to go . Dewitt and Dave said,
"Well , you can go to the movie, there ain ' t nothin' wrong with
that ." So I d i d take her to the movie one time. She knew I
didn ' t like her . I said it in front of them and everybody else.
I am sure my mind , to be honest about it , had it been one of the
other girls I might would have got involved more. I don' t think
anything would have got me away from my basic moorings . I can
definitely say that. My basic religious training -- making God
first. It was good for me that I didn ' t particularly like her .
Her color , her just making herself a nuisance. But all three of
them would give me their checks which I thought was detestable .
A man living off a woman. These things mitigated to making my
quick decision to go back home and get my wife . So I don ' t
believe I was there over -- I know I had gotten one paycheck
but before the next weekend I had rented a house in the project .
INTERVIEWER: You a lready had one child by this time?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Pat was already born , February ' 43. She
would have been a little over a year old.
INTERVIEWER: So when Ruby came, the baby came too . Did you live
in the same place?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I rented an apartment in a section of
Maysville .
INTERVIEWER: Did she work outside the home?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH, No . No . I still worked at Brookley
35
Field Air Force Base. I went to church every Sunday .
INTERVIEWER: That leads me to ask about this . You have told me
before that you went -- you tried to go to a Methodist Chu r ch and
the services weren ' t particularly spiritual and you went to
Corinthian Baptist Church and you felt welcome and warm.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: And I worked with the people. Just
opened up to me and I think I told you this before. If I didn't
I shoul d have . They just deferred to me . They left their car to
me . They would let me have their car. They would walk to work
at Brookley Field Air Force Base . It was an amazing thing how
the way was always open for me.
INTERVIEWER: Now Reverend E. A. Palmer was the pastor there.
Did he have any particul ar i nfluence on you?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: In the sense that he was a strictly
moral person . His interpretation of the scripture -- he was not
a very emotional preacher. He wasn't a "Zoomer." You could get
what he was saying. His thoughts were very pronounced . To that
extent it was good. The other thing was I guess it showed me
that no man is perfect . No man is God and I am sure I told you
about this one person that was always provocative to him. The
fellows , if they would want to say something to him, they would
get [Alfred1 LeShore . They called him Bo. In meetings Bo would
chall enge him. Bo was one of my close friends and so were these
other people who I called devils . They were nice to me. Gave me
utmost respect , tol d me many of their secrets. Reverend Palmer ,
when he'd see him [B01 coming he would change colors and he was
36
already Black. I think this helped me to l earn in my dealing
with people to I said this was God's way -- we were s itting on
out in Maysville, ' cause he lived in another section. One day
we were sitting on the porch of somebody ' s house. Alfred
LeShore, passed by . He changed from his normally dark color to
the color of his sweater . He spoke. I had been in some church
meetings, which had had friction that he had egged on . So he
said he was awar e -- he sensed that I saw him. He said to me,
"You know I know you can feel a sense that I just can't stand
him. There is just something about him I just can't be
comfortable around him. II I said to him "Reverend Palmer, I am
much younger than you are. I really l ook up to you . That is the
person you probably ought to try to understand. Because what he
is saying and what the others are saying, he just thinks he's got
courage . He thinks it shows his manhood to jump at you . You
have to learn to respond to it." He said , "Well, he just really
gets on my nerves. " I said, "He loves you and probably respects
you more than the rest of them. That ' s just your cross. You are
going to have to bear that. If you can learn not to jump back at
him every time he jumps a t you, I can't tell you what to do but
it would be better -- all that he says I hear him say , they don't
have the courage to say that."
INTERVIEWER: What else did you learn from Reverend Palmer?
Would you say that you were closer to him than any other minister
up until that time, were you closer to Reverend Palmer? REVEREND
SHUTTLESWORTH: Oh , yeah, but you must remember I didn 't meet him
37
until '44.
INTERVIEWER: Would you call him sort of a father in the
ministry?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Yeah, and people used to say I favored
him a lot. Course he was a little lower than I was. He was an
older man. He was in his sixties when I met him. Yes, I think
he had an influence in that way, although I was always set in my
religious beliefs. He would pastor -- he came out once a month
at his church where he lived out in Pritchard. By him just
pastoring Corinthian -- no I'm sorry three Sundays. One Sunday
out there. The Sunday that he didn't pastor -- he had this other
fellow, his assistants carrying on. They didn't have much
thought in their messages; they were just good people.
[Indistinguishable.] When I came it was a little gray you
understand. All of them including the old men, older than
Reverend Palmer, Reverend Greene, Reverend Richardson and some
others who always deferred to me. They let me preach and it got
to where the Sundays that they knew I was going to be there, even
when I went to school in Selma and would go back to Mobile.
INTERVIEWER: During those years how often did you preach in
these ministers's churches. You were not pastoring yourself but
how often were you preaching?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I wasn't pastoring.
INTERVIEWER: Yeah, I know, as a member, just a normal member of
Corinthian Baptist Church. These pastors were calling on you to
fill their pulpits from time to time.
38
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: From time to time. Then I was going to
school at night and I would be known for having a gift. The
district association over which Reverend Palmer was a moderator,
I had a chance to expound theories and so forth. But it wasn ' t
like every Sunday.
INTERVIEWER: How often, would you say about once a month?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: That I preached at somebody ' s church?
INTERVIEWER: Yes .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No. Not that often. I preached at
Corinthian after I had been there from about ' 45 or ' 46, I
preached at the other church -- I'd have one Sunday. Then when
Palmer would be ill he would let me speak and some time on Sunday
nights.
INTERVIEWER: So what other lessons in the ministry did you learn
from Reverend Palmer or from observing him?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, I learned something I tell all
young ministers, that people would push you. They naturally, I
had three [young ministers ] coming up under me and I would give a
message to my son- in-law because he is should learn this too ,
that no matter how popul ar you become, to keep your head level
and not get overbalanced and think you are the only thing.
You ' re just there. They came down and sent these people , John,
Duke and several men and they always enjoyed it, being around me
and I enjoyed being around them. I told them we began to raise
chickens and do a lot of things together. Go fishing. They got
to the point where my influence and my gift to preach - - other
39
preachers would just be there . They never would preach. It was
just deferred to me on the Sundays he wasn ' t there. Someti mes I
would preach when he was there when he got sick or something .
When he got sick he would just ask me t o preach. They dec i ded to
use my influence to get him out of the church . They knew the
church gonna be full the Sunday I'm there. So John , and I
forget who the other one was , Palmore Dockery, good fellow,
Sunday School Superintendent , said to me one night, IIReverend,
-- this was a l ong time -- we want you just to preside at the
meeting -- you don ' t have to take no stand on nothing. This is
something that we feel ought to be done." You know, I listened
to them and I didn ' t disagree with them. But they were getting
together and they were going to bring up a vote against him and
vote him out . I didn ' t give any answer. I said, "Well, I'm not
sure about this. " They said , "Well, you don 't have to be
we
involved in it, you just be sure that what ' s done is done right."
So that night , that i s when I knew the Lord was really guiding
me, I d i dn ' t s l eep hardly at all. It was 2:00 o ' clock in the
morning before I went to sleep. I talked to Him. "God forbid
that I turn my hand against the Lord ' s anointed" like David when
Saul was trying to kill him. I knew that was the Lord talking to
me. So at 5:00 o ' clock - they always gathered around Palmore
Dockery and Paul Lawson and me were right together. John lived
up the street about a b l ock and a half and he was a so we
always gathered around Paul's house. I remember it was cool that
morning because they had a fire up there. They were standing
40
around talking getting ready to go to work . Tom was going to go
t o Mobile to go to Brookley Field to work and Paul had the fire
there because he was a b l acksmith, famous blacksmith . Palmo r e
was getting ready to go wherever he went . I got up at 4:30 so
I'd be sure to get there during their meeting . I went there and
they said , "Hey , Reverend, you 're up mighty early." I said,
"Yeah , I didn't get any sleep last night. I want to tel l you this
that ya 'll can't hol d no meeting Sunday when I 'm ther e . When I
get through preaching I am going to dismiss the folks and suggest
that they go home. All night last night t he Lord was telling me
that God forbid that I put forth my hand against the Lord ' s
anoint ed . Now Reverend Palmer has not done anyt hing to me . If I
had differences with him I would t ell him, and if you all have
differences, ya ' ll ought to tell him. You had told me I wouldn ' t
have nothing to do with it if I wouldn ' t do nothing but presi de
but I will have something t o do with it if I let it happen when I
am there. So when I get through preaching I am going to say I am
leaving. So when I get through , I am going to tell the people
I 'm leaving . If you all have a meeting, you will have it on your
own . I suggest you go home because I don't know nothing Reverend
Palmer has don but he is a decent and honest man. " And Dockery,
who talked the most , said to me." And John -- John was a crook I
think. He said, "Well, Reverend, I respect you for that . You
are a man of God."
INTERVIEWER: Did they go ahead and ge t rid of Reverend Pa lmer?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: That ' s what they wanted.
41
INTERVIEWER: But did they go ahead and do it?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No, no, it didnlt even come up.
And that Sunday I didnlt have to tell the people nothing. But I
was going to. I said, IINow if you are going to have a meeting and
you announce it, I will have to say I have a feeling as a member
of this church, that we donlt have anything to hold against the
pastor at all. You sure ainlt paying him nothin -- $20.00 a
Sunday. You talk about really getting close to them. They
really got close, but it kept them from messin l -- from
destroying another preacher.
INTERVIEWER: Are there ways in which you can look at your career
in the ministry as a pastor and say that in some ways the way I
do things I got from Reverend Palmer?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No. We are totally different people.
INTERVIEWER: You didnlt emulate him in any particular ways?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Except in, and you could get that from
anywhere, thinking about his messages and getting a thought out
of it. We donlt preach alike. I guess trying to be upright in
front of the people. That would be my bent anyway.
INTERVIEWER: What age person was he?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: He was in his sixties when I first met
him.
INTERVIEWER; I assume he is deceased now.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Oh, yeah, I went to his funeral. Then I
guess another thing was, he was moderator of the association. He
was the top man in the association and he was pushing this
42
school. Cedar Grove Academy. He was dedicated so I guess I
should say I got some emphasis there from his life. But I didn't
have to meet him to become dedicated.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, well a couple of questions relative to that
but before I get to that, when did you start going to Cedar
Grove?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Shortly after I went to Mobile. See,
when I went to Mobile I wasn't preaching. I started preaching in
'44. I went to Mobile in '43. In June 1944 was when I was
licensed to preach. I had told him before that I wanted to be
baptized. I was baptized probably before '44 in that time. Then
in June 1944 I got my license to preach. I was the first
preacher he had liked. Although they went out from it too. Just
a thing that spiritually did not move me and I went back to
Corinthian and I quit going to Corinthian for a couple of
Sundays. I went to my church and I went back to Corinthian for a
couple of Sundays to be sure that I wanted to then I
communicated to my wife. I told her what I was thinking about.
I wasn't really thinking that you had to get out from your
background to do the work of the Lord. I wasn't really thinking
that you couldn't be under a bishop and do what I needed to do.
That wasn't in the back of my mind. I came to that understanding
later. Had I been Methodist I never would have been able to go
out here. But it was that I was trying to stay in line with what
my traditions were. I had to figure out in my mind how mamma
would feel if I told her I went to the Baptist church. EVen Ruby
43
felt the same thing.
INTERVIEWER: That that particular local church was colder than
the Baptist .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Look like the preacher was straining
trying to preach and I was more sorry for him more than I was
listening to his sermon.
INTERVIEWER: Let me get to your baptism. Whenever it was, did
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: That had to be in the fall or before the
fall.
INTERVIEWER: Any particular thing you remember about your being
baptized as an adult at this point?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I indicated to Reverend Palmer shortly
after I went to Mobile, after I started going to church, that I
was a Methodist and had been feeling for some time, since I was
18 1/2 because of the ministry, and John and them were saying,
"Yeah, the way you were talking in Sunday School, we could see
that you had something unusual about you." Not that I put any
stock in that. And so, I had talked to them about it before I
had talked to the pastor. I told him when I first met him I told
him I went to the Methodist Church but all of the people were
just so warm. It wasn't too long after I started visiting his
church that I felt a difference and he knew almost forthwith that
I had to, being called to the ministry, he said, "Well, of
course, if you feel that way about it, we will take you in and we
will have to baptize you." He said "I have never licensed a man
44
before." Ordinarily that would have turned me off right there
but I wasn't talking to him just to get a license. I was talking
about how my basic slant was. Of course John and them worried me
to corne on and do it. I said, "Well if you like it here corne on
and join over here." I said, "Well, I am a Methodist." They
said, "It ain I t where you go." I said, "Well, I I 11 think about
it." I talked to Ruby about it. She noticed a difference too.
So I said "You know I feel like I might join that church. I am
going to go back again." I went to the Methodist church again.
I think it was two Sundays straight to see if I could feel -- you
know you can crush something in them to get what they want. It
was just worse than ever. I didn't get nothin' out of the
sermon. I didn't feel moved. It was cold. Even the litaneous
[liturgical] section of the service which I used to enjoy from a
boy up, just didn't take. It was during that time, if you would
ask me some special thing of Reverend Palmer, you was asking me
while ago, it was during that time that he preached the sermon,
during that period of time he really preached where Samuel took
the ark where it had been taken by the Philistines and brought it
back to Gilgal or wherever it was. He preached that sermon.
"Here I set my Ebenezar for hitherto has the Lord helped me in
the time of decision making." I don't know whether you use the
word decision making. You saying what the Lord does for you, you
have to make up your mind. I think he was talking to me because
I didn't even comment but that sermon stuck in my mind. I made
up my mind shortly thereafter. I knew it was going against all
45
my traditions. I was a Hide bound traditionalist in the
Methodist church. So then I made up my mind . I told him "I have
decided I am going to join this church. II He said , "We will be
g l ad to have you . " I said , "You know , I told you that I felt
this call to preach. " He said , IIWe ll, that will be no problem .
Just have to license you. Baptize you. " So I was bapti zed one
Sunday night . As I recal l it was Sunday night. After that I got
the license , because he made known to him that I was [a preacher]
-- and then attending Sunday School and making all the services
after that . I participated and everything .
INTERVIEWER: Did Ruby, was she baptized at some point in the
Bapti st church?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: She was baptized i n the Corinthian
Church.
INTERVIEWER: You were discussing whether to leave the AME Church
with her. Did she have any strong feelings . .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: She did at first , you know , we ' re from
the Met hodist Church . You ' re Methodi st , I 'm Methodist, Mamma ' s
Methodi st. But it was never a thing . .
INTERVIEWER: What did your mother think?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well , I told her how I had this feeling.
I told her I went out and when we would go back home
periodi cal ly . You remember it wasn ' t t oo long before I l eft her
before I had become a Baptist , because it was during that fa l l in
' 44 when I was baptized. She said , "Well, son , you remember
what ' s coming to you. If it ' s what you feel the Lord wants you
46
to do, you have to do it. So I had no quarrel, and with her
[Ruby'sJ auntie, there wasn't no quarrel.
INTERVIEWER: Let me ask another question related to your call to
the ministry. We have talked about this before. On one hand you
talk about as long as you can remember you wanted to be a
preacher. In your mind, at what point did it begin to narrow
down and [being aJ doctor became out of the question and minister
-- let me ask you a different way. In your mind was there a
difference between something that you felt it was "I want to be a
minister" and a sense of calling that God wanted you.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: More than that. It was a sense that
this is what God wanted me to do.
INTERVIEWER: When did that sense that God wanted you .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Before I left Birmingham to go to
Mobile. I had the sense. I was superintendent of the Sunday
School and I had the sense that this is what God wanted me to do
but any time you disrupt your family life, that's putting it more
on the back burner. I was to be carried to the next Methodist
Conference to get my license. My minister had already promised
me that.
INTERVIEWER: What I am trying to get at is the point at which
you realized things were changing from "I want to be a minister"
to "God wants me to be a minister."
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Before I met Ruby.
INTERVIEWER: Not so much when it happened but how did you come
to realize?
47
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: It comes into your deepest . • . like
right now. There are things that I may have ideas about or I may
decide but comes to me deeply when I am really praying and
meditating.
INTERVIEWER: How do you know the difference between what you
want to do and what God wants you to do?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Because, it stays on your mind. You
can't get away from it. It stays there despite the fact that you
might set it on the back burner or you might do this and that.
This is when I feel this way about something, I move on it. Like
I told the preacher in Birmi ngham, when God tells me to jump, I
jump. It's up to Him to fix a place for me to land. I feel that
way about it now. But it comes deepest in your mind. It comes
to you in a way that you know it is not just some manmade
aversion or some manmade
avocation or whatever it is. Or some man-made machination. You
really corne to a conclusion that this is what I understand God
wants me to do.
INTERVIEWER: There wasn't a particular time or place or event
that made you realize, "You know, God really does want me to be a
minister."
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, I knew when I heard that sermon
that made me consider a change and join the church. That was not
because I thought that a bishop was going to stop me from doing
what I wished, i t was because this was what the Lord wanted me to
do. Before that, before I left to move to Mobile, I knew that
48
this was what the Lord wanted me to do and I no longer felt any
affinity, or have any ambivalence about being a doctor or a
minister.
INTERVIEWER: Let me go on to something else here now. You
mentioned Cedar Grove Academy. That was founded by Reverend
Palmer. Now at some point you mentioned a Doctor Maynard, a
white Baptist minister.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I met them out there.
INTERVIEWER: At Cedar Grove?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: At Cedar Grove.
INTERVIEWER: Okay now I don't understand the arrangement whereby
a school founded by a Black minister like Reverend Palmer -- how
was it that a white minister was teaching
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: He wasn't teaching there. He would corne
out and lecture sometimes. He wasn't a regular teacher. But the
white Baptists had what was known as "Good Will Missionary to the
Negroes." He would visit churches. He would visit district
associations. He would visit anything that the Black Baptists
had. So the whites had liaison. Their commitment to God was
that they acting as liaison and talking to Black folks.
INTERVIEWER: His horne was in Mobile?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Mobile.
[Interruption. ]
INTERVIEWER: You were talking about Reverend Maynard and his
wife. Would you tell me generally about your going to school at
Cedar Grove.
49
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I would go out there maybe two times or
three times a week.
INTERVIEWER: At night?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Yeah. This time our shifts had changed
from morning to evening. I would drive until 3:00 at night . The
first it was from 3:00 - 11:00. I'd take review papers or go out
there. I started looking at a little Greek. Not that much. It
was theology basically. Bible study by books and then systematic
theology. Those were the basic things. You'd never get through
the book. It was a great big thick book . This was over a period
of time but I started going to school as quickly as I joined the
church. Reverend Palmer told me I should study so I went out and
enrolled. That's where I got in church , Reverend Palmer being
the moderator. Maynard and his wife would be fairly conversant
with them and I said to Reverend Palmer that I felt like my
calling was to reach a lot of people and that I wanted to go to
school . So he, naturally , I guess he indicated this to them and
they , in addition to seeing me in different places , made it their
business to see what they could do. So one or two times that I
recall they gave me extra clothes and stuff like that. I
communicated with them. Old Man Maynard was a good teacher. He
was prepared for the ministry. They have it in theology and so I
communicated to them that I had hoped to go to school. They said
they would help as best they could. The time came when I went up
to a theological debate and summer school and I had a speech that
I learned very quickly. Brother Motley, the same fellow that was
50
in Mobile then. He was in Se l ma University and I debated against
him. It was almost like President Bush over Dukakis. I said to
the President [of Selma Universi t y] I wanted to go to school. He
said "Well , we would be glad to have you. II He said "We are going
to build some houses down there where married students can live. 1I
So I was t he f irst married student to live there. So it was in
'46 when I went to give the debate and '47 -- my son was born in
September '46 -- and I wouldn 't leave my wife, but I went to
school in '47. During t he hurricane when we moved.
INTERVIEWER: Before you get to Selma, what sti cks out in you r
mind about what you learned from Cedar Grove. Anything in
particular?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Basically I enjoyed
INTERVIEWER: How long did you go to c l asses there?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Over a peri od from '45, '46 and up to
the time I l eft . Basically the pastors of the churches were the
teachers -- B. B. Williams of St Lewis Street Baptist Church.
Lovely fellow , I just loved him. U. J. Robinson , who was the
Secretary of American Bapti st Convention under o ld Dr. Jemison.
But I always thought u . J. had a lot of probl ems , being the Mr.
It. Parti ally stuck on himself I guess. And John , who was the
church clerk , showed me a note where way back when Corinthian
needed to borr ow some money, he charged them $10.00 to sign a
note. I always held that against him in my own mi nd . He came to
Selma University later. But at Cedar Grove I was a lways
impressed with Dr. J. A. Robinson of Stone Street , which I
51
thought was one of the finest ministers I ever met. B. B.
Williams. B. B. would talk to me about little nonsensical and
yet funny things. He would tell me about his life. E. B. walked
kind like he was hurt. He couldn't walk good. He was telling
about the time he was up preaching and made emphasis by kicking
at the devil and his foot got caught in a chair and he'd like to
have fallen. Things like that. He taught English. J. A.
Robinson taught systematic theology. U. J. taught New Testament.
I remember in that school Miss Palmer taught music. That is
where I learned to sing. I remember she had difficulty trying to
teach some of those preachers who never would learn how to sing.
But I had a voice and I could sing. I never did learn notes but
I know when they go up and down. She would always talk how
Reverend Palmer started that school with three oil lamps. She
would talk about it and he would talk about it. He would tell us
all the time about it. The studies I think I really enjoyed and
I really appreciated that school.
INTERVIEWER: How many students generally were enrolled there?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: At that time maybe fifteen. Sometimes
maybe eight or nine.
INTERVIEWER: So basically this Maynard person influenced you in
encouraging you.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No, he didn't influence me to go to
school; they just promised to help. If you asked me what
influence I got from them I am not sure that I got any except
encouragement. If I had any needs, but I was working. I never
52
was the kind of person to ask for anything. They would give us
as students. I always took it at my own obligations.
INTERVIEWER: What about your ordination? According to your
certificate over there you were ordained in August of 1948? What
do you remember about that? If you did it in good Baptist
fashion you had a council.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I think the name is on it isn't it?
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember any particular questions they asked
you in the counsel?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: About conversion and you must remember I
would not have been ordained then except that this church called
me from Selma. So when the church called me, I had been there
since '44 with a license -- four years. These were old doctrinal
preachers you know. B. B. Williams I think was on there. He
would have flunked me any way. If he had asked a question I
didn't understand, he would help me. But I was pretty well
caught up in the doctrine. I knew those and I knew something
about Baptist beliefs. Dr. Robinson, I think he is on there too,
J. A. Robinson, who was -- see I didn't have a difficult time on
the council. I was very brilliant. I could sing. I challenged
U. J. Robinson on this thing in Acts where Ananias and Saphira
who didn't turn in the money and lied. So he was saying to us
we happened to be over there studying. He was saying to us that
that was wrong. That was communism. He didn't have any
understanding or grasp of communism. So I said, "Doctor, did you
say this was communism?" "Yeah, nothing but communism. The Lord
53
never intended for everybody to have everything alike." So I
said, "Are you saying it was wrong since it was generally agreed
that everybody sold. What most people don't understand is
people are looking for a quick return of Christ. In that thing
you get whatever you've got anyway. They were not preparing to
live. They were preparing for the rapture. And so heaven
approved it. So I asked him -- he said, "This is wrong as it can
be." I said, "I thought you said we take the Bible as it is."
"Yeah, but I don't know ... " I said, "If it was wrong, why did
the Holy Spirit kill Saphira?" I asked him that in front of the
class. It was a big thing. But I didn't want a doctorate -­"
doctor means something to me. I said, "If it was wrong and God
did not approve of it, why did the Holy Spirit kill Saphira?"
You know what he said? They just died. I said, "They sure did
and anything else is going to die when the Lord gets ready for
him to die." I won out over him. He didn't say too much more
but I really had him hung up on a tree. It was good discussion -
- good give and take. I never did relish differing with teachers
but I just couldn't let him get by with that, telling me that was
wrong. And God had indicated his favor by killing this person on
the spot. But I don't think I ever enjoyed school any more than
those two or three hours a night. Here again, I was the shining
light of that school. Just like later on when I went to Selma
University. I had three children when I went to Selma
University. I made the highest marks average ever at Selma
University, other than just somebody transcended it here lately.
54
I was just apt. I took some Greek there and this and that.
Latin. French.
INTERVIEWER: When you went to Selma what were your favorite
courses? Who were your favorite teachers? Do any of them stand
out. I noticed on your transcript you had taken a course in
Christian doctrine at Selma University. Do you remember anything
about that course?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I think Dr. N. M. Carter died a few
years ago. Dr. Carter taught Christian doctrine and general
theology. He was a nice fellow. I think he got his learning as
he taught. Took training himself correspondence. He was very
genteel. I remember meeting old Dr. Jemison, who was the head of
National Baptist Convention, lived right there below the school.
INTERVIEWER: D. V. (Jemison]?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH, D. V. came up. It was always nice to
meet Dr. Jemison.
INTERVIEWER: What were your impressions of him?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: At that time? He was Head of National
Baptist Convention, Head of District Association, Head of State
Convention. You think of him as being nice but I never did
worship any man. As I learned more about him, I learned he
wasn't really an educated at Selma University. man. He had a
very loud voice like his son [Theodore] Jemison. At Baton Rouge
Jemison preached. He didn't have a -- he is not deeply
theological. He had a loud voice. I remember some of the words
of lecture that he would give. Just about being president of the
55
convention, he would come around and Dr. Dinkins would have him
say something. I don't remember too much about what he said. I
just respected him for his position. I really thought more of
him when I first met him than later.
INTERVIEWER: You also had a course in what we then called "Negro
History." Do you have any particular recollections about that?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I don't remember who taught that. It
wasn't that long.
INTERVIEWER: If you can recall anything, I would guess that the
course in Black History
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH:
course.
back in those • • •
I think Robert Williams taught that
INTERVIEWER: days, surely he would have talked about Booker T.
Washington and W. B. DuBois and different
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: DuBois, a little bit, but it wouldn't
have been with the emphasis on Blackness like now. It would be
the emphasis of how some Black persons got to be a role model
more than everybody's role model and this and that. It wasn't in
today's syndrome of things. Most teaching back then was
moralistic and perhaps theological in the sense that it sort of
lists peoples ideals and it was that more than, talking about
these modern theological ideas about what the church ought to be
doing.
INTERVIEWER: Do you have any recollections of coming to a point
where you felt like perhaps you were more pro DuBois over against
Washington? Or Washington over against DuBois?
56
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No, it was I guess after we got into the
Civil Rights struggle. Actually I didn't learn, or think too
much about DuBois , and don't know a whole lot now to be honest
with you . I think Jacqueline Clark, who wrote something on the
Alabama Christian Movement for HUman Rights, did more to
emphasize [Marcus] Garvey's thinking over some others, as I
listen to her talk. Booker T. Washington, :let down your bucket
where you are." Garvey was talking about Blacks ought to be
different and one time he had a "Back to Africa" thing , didn't
he? But I would never agree with that anyway.
INTERVIEWER: Would Washington vs . Carver? When did you forget
hearing about those people?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Generall y, I have always known about
Booker T. Washington. Any time we would have Emancipation Day,
that was the biggest day among Negroes and Blacks anyway back
then. In fac t i t was an Emancipation Day address at the NAACP in
Birmingham where they asked me to serve as NAACP chairman.
Biggest gathering we had among Blacks was basically Emancipation
Day on Human Rights. But I have generally known history about
Washington , Carver and all that kind of stuff. But I never had
too many disti nct studies on Garvey and his philosophy as such
except that he was a historical figure in this period.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, well I think we will let this do for this
session and pick up another time .
57
INTERVIEWER: Reverend Shuttlesworth, how would you essentially
summarize your time at Selma University? How did being at Selma
University affect you or influence you in any way other than
educating you , did it leave a lasting impression on you in some
ways?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: The whole Selma experience was important
to me. Of course, I was grown. I was preaching . I wasn't
ordained. I was accepted in Sel ma almost like I was in Mobile .
People went out of their way to J. D. Pritchard,
Superintendent of Sunday School at First Baptist, where I
eventually pastored. Joe Creer , who had a store right there
across the alley from Selma University , the teachers at Selma
Universi ty , Mr . Dinkins, the president , widely read , Mr. Dinkins
told me one time he knew over a dozen languages . He had all the
knowledge but if his wife hadn't had some money he would have
starved to death. Two times before the last time I saw him you
could almost ball your fist up and get inside of his collar. The
man was a whiz kid on knowledge which I guess, I was a young man
when I went there but I never have been impressed by knowledge.
I could see in him a person who had it but it didn ' t make him a
well rounded person. I thought he was real warped in some of his
senses. For instance , he said to me, "If you make a penny a day
you are making money. Well, that's true. " That ' s what he said
to me. He would go out on the lawn. He took all the time in the
world to teach me about the simplest things. He showed me one
day how to rake leaves on the campus there. It sloped off down
58
into the field where he would go out there and rake up sticks and
leaves. He told me one day "you rake this way for leaves and you
rake this way for sticks." He would always rake this stuff up
into a pile. He'd put kind of a half wire fence around it so the
papers would still blowout. He would rake it up. Any time he
would rake it, within six hours it would be back on the campus
again. I just thought he was nuts, really. I don't think he was
a nutty person but in his own wisdom, I don't think he was wise.
He had told us when he carne up he was real impressed at my
ability of oration. That's how Selma met me. There were a lot
of people in Selma at this thing. Some of the people at First
Baptist where I pastored were there at the program.
INTERVIEWER: This was while you were still in Mobile? And it
was an oratorical contest?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: This is how I was introduced to Selma.
INTERVIEWER: Where was this contest?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Held in the Dinkins Memorial Chapel [of
Selma University] and it was full that day. I told him I would
corne up and he said that he would arrange to build some houses on
the campus for married students. As I said before, I was the
first married student up there. He was going to help me out.
What he called "help" was, like I am supposed to put the windows
in the dormitory and it was my job to fire up the boiler for
Foster Hall which was the girls dormitory. Reverend Motley, who
carne in to [Indistinguishable.] and against whom I orated, he
pastors here now. Motley used to say that Mr. Dinkins had the
59
philosophy of changing food. He could give you grits and gravy
all the time then to change it he'd give you gravy and grits. He
would take a piece of bologna. I remember this. He'd cut it two
ways or three ways, sometimes four to be short. That was his
eating, although I never did particularly eat in the dormitory.
He had a grinder where he could grind flour, all that stuff. He
had anything and he believed in compost fertilizer. That is why
he kept raising that stuff up. For it would fly back out. He
believed in compost -- not chemicals. That's the way he was
doing. I said to him "Do you realize how long it would take you
to fertilize your field with compost?" Now I never did have but
one clash with Mr. Dinkins. He thought I was a brilliant and he
always treated me with respect. I was married. He always called
me -- He never called any preacher "Mr." I wasn't "Mr."
Shuttlesworth. He had a lot of pride. He believed in the
Baptists as opposed to any other denomination. I fixed the glass
and things and fired the boiler. Not enough for a family to live
on. My wife finally started working at Birwell Infirmary
Hospital. It happened to be a Catholic Hospital -- that just got
his guts. So, one morning he said to me "Your wife working at
the Infirmary?" I said, "Yeah, I'm glad she got a job. II He
said, "You know, we're Baptists and she ain't got no business
around there." He indicated to me that she had to stop. I said,
"Mr. Dinkins, now you told me when I came up here you would help.
I can't feed my wife off these pennies you give me for these
windows. Although he did buy a cow for me and I paid the school
60
back by selling them two quarts a milk a day at $.14. I had to
pay for the cow by giving the school two quarts of milk. All
over I sold them for $ .14. But when he said this to me I said to
him, "And besides, Mr. Dinkins, nobody tells my wife what to do
except me." He bit his tongue.
did I have any clash with him.
Never from that day to this day
I liked him. I ' d go by there and
he'd sit up and be working on figures at 5:00 in the morning.
Trying to have an error on something you know.
INTERVIEWER: You talked about his learning and this knowledge.
What was his specific field?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH, I don't know. He was sitting there
talking to me and he told me he knew at least, oh, how many
languages. He knew several languages but he told me he had
expertise in at least fourteen or fifteen different fields,
scientific endeavors and this and that.
INTERVIEWER: Did he teach as well as administer at the
University?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: He didn't teach but he came out to our
Greek class one time. When we heard him reading you could tell
our professor didn't know nothing about it. Then he was reading
Latin one day. He was reading just like you and I are talking.
He was reading French one day. So he was really
INTERVIEWER: Was he a minister?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No.
INTERVIEWER: Were there any particular ways you think he
influenced you? I know you were already an adult by then.
61
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: He showed me how not to believe in a lot
of sense, that you can have a lot of sense but didn't have any
wisdom. I already knew that. The Good Book tells you that. I
am a preacher so I would have some understanding. I did admire
him for his principles. He was against immorality. He would get
up there and make a speech starting off on the chewing gum
traffic, the smoking traffic, the liquor traffic. He talked one
day in chapel for forty-five minutes on vices. Great big vice.
He talked more about that than he did about sex. In fact I never
did hear him say anything about sex. Finally the teachers forced
him to give a little bit and put a pop machine in one of the
lower floors of the building. He was so firm against that kind
of stuff. He was making some statement and climaxed it by
saying, "Only the blood of Jesus can cleanse me for allowing that
sin." -- that pop machine. He was just that way. Doctrinaire.
Course I admired his morality. His wife was a nice little lady.
Her family had had money. She was so sweet. She taught music.
She thought there was nothing like me. She didn't teach me, as
such.
INTERVIEWER: Are there any other teachers there that stand out
in your mind who had influence over you?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, I admired Dean Ellis. He wasn't
nearly as educated as Dinkins. His second wife Eleanor was a
young woman and she would teach us about different things you
know. But I admired him. And Dean Carter in the theological
school.
62
INTERVIEWER: What impressed you about these peopl e , Dean Ellis
for example?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH : Just being a good man. Nothing about
him that moved me. You must remember I was already grown. He
said words of encouragement and back then I preached at two
churches. Call ed to one in July. Before I knew it the other
one , one was t hree miles from Se l ma. The other one was about a
half mile from Selma . Maybe a mile.
INTERVIEWER: Tell me how you came to get those two rural
churches.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, it is amazing. I was just going
to church at Selma University, I mean at First Bapti st. Just
like the people i n Mobile were friendly, I was accepted at First
Baptist Church. Once in the while in the evening I would go
around to some of the other local churches. To be honest with
you , I am not sure, as I go back and think about that because I
didn't consider my gift as a preacher [to be ] intellect so much
because I couldn't whoop. I couldn 't get a tune as such.
[Refers to the Bl ack preaching styl e and practice of moving into
the chant mode .] I think I was down at the market one Saturday
and two of the deacons tol d me they were l ooki ng for a young man ,
would I corne out and preach? In 1948 , and I hadn't been in
Selma too long. I beli eve I met them in April or Mayor June. I
went out there and preached. I had no intentions and no
expectation of being called. They called me at Everdal e [Baptist
Church ] .
63
INTERVIEWER: Let me ask you this. Ah .
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: They called pastors every year anyhow.
INTERVIEWER: I am a minister and I remember my first sermon. Do
you remember your first sermon? Tell me about it.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: In Mobile God was speaking to the man
that told Saul to go on his way down there that there was someone
down there to tell you what to do. This man talked to him and
the Lord told him and said he was a chosen vessel. And my text
was "And I will show him how great things he must suffer for my
name ' s sake -- Paul." Incidently, that ' s been my life. And I
hadntt thought about it ttil you mentioned it just then. That
was my first sermon "and I will show him how great things he must
suffer for my name's sake." My sermon was about Paul's journey
to go and persecute and ran into this light that blinded him. He
asked God the questions, "who" and "what would you have me to
do?1t which I think are the two basic questions of life. I dontt
know how theological I was and I don ' t think I stood up ten
minutes. Looks like when I got up something left me. But that
was my first sermon.
INTERVIEWER: What else do you remember about some of your first
sermons while you were in Mobile, or sort of going around
preaching in different churches in Mobile and then when you first
got to Selma?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I remember the first t i me I preached and
the whole church got happy. This was another man ' s church. It
was a church in Hopewell Avenue or one of the areas out from
64
Mobile. I preached on "Greater is He that is in you than he that
is in the world." That was a time it might have been a time
when people had me to tryout for a church. I don't remember.
But I remember that it was such a tremendous thing to one of the
deacons who asked me to come out. He didn't know who was coming
that Sunday. It was vacant and I was back in the study and he
came in and said "Are you the preacher that is going to preach
here today?" I said "Well, yes." He said, "You sure don't look
like no preacher to me." When I got up to preach, I preached for
about twenty minutes. He came up to the pulpit. I gave him my
hand to shake my hand. He grabbed me around my legs and carried
me around in front of the church shouting. He was happy. I was
afraid he was going to drop me. But my text "Greater is He that
is in you than he that is in the world." Never preached it
since. I remember that and I remember preaching at a lot of
churches.
INTERVIEWER: In those early days of your preaching, did you ever
talk about Civil Rights in those days?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No, but I am sure that many times I
talked about what was right and what was wrong. We took the idea
the white man can't keep things his own way or can't keep as a
regular cliche. [We'd say} "Your day is coming," but not to jump
off to attack them for racism, we didn't know about that. We
knew segregation and discrimination was wrong. Nobody could
justify that before the world. God will do . . . you know, that
was the persuasion.
65
INTERVIEWER: You didn't necessarily talk about it in sermons?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Yes, of course, even when I was
preaching to white folks. White people in the audience. It
never bothered me. I have never cut out anything, even when I
speak about Civil Rights. I say whatever comes to my mind.
INTERVIEWER: But would you say it was not a major theme of your
preaching?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: No, it was not. Okay, Jezebel like we
said, "A dog will lick your blood. II White man got to give an
account for all his sins. We talk about you got to have some
white man to say you are a good nigger, or this and that. That
is the kind of syndrome we were in. Things had to change.
Trouble don't last always. Segregation isn't gonna last always.
But that was not done with a prophetic zeal to get up and change
segregation.
INTERVIEWER: Well, we will get to how that change occurred in
you in terms of your preaching at some other point. But what I
am interested in hearing, since you didn't talk about Civil
Rights specifically and zealously in those early years, what were
some of your favorite preaching themes or scriptures?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Just passages of scripture. For
instance, I used to do a lot on the blind man. As Jesus passed
by, He saw a man born blind. I just used the word passing and
seeing on life's highway. Where the devil came out of that man
and went in those hogs, one time I said when the hogs had sense
enough to choose death. Not spectacular. I never tried to be
66
spectacular in my thoughts.
INTERVIEWER: Would you say that if you had a purpose for a
sermon, generally were the purposes of your sermons to convert,
to get conversions, to get Christians to live out their lives?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Generally, that was my basic thrust, to
get Christians to live out their lives and to lean toward
conversion. I think all preaching should be done with that
purpose. But you wouldn't have people like acknowledged sinners
sitting before you that you knew -- you weren't in a revival.
Better Christian stewardship. That was the general thing.
INTERVIEWER: Has that changed through the years or
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I think the slant towards Civil Rights
makes you bring out more. All my sermons now are not Civil
Rights sermons. It just depends upon your thought process and
what you intend to get over. I am not sure that you could preach
pure Civil Rights sermon and keep a church interested. You have
to preach Calvary. Calvary is the important thing that the
church is based upon. Birth, life, death, resurrection of Jesus
Christ. But all of life is related to that.
INTERVIEWER: As you began in the ministry and developed through
the years as a minister, how did you relate to death,
resurrection, Calvary, as you mentioned. How did you do it and
relate it to people? Is it a matter of just "Jesus died, if you
believe in him, he will save you." or how did you use that theme
in your preaching as you began?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: The climax of all preaching is Calvary.
67
There are people now who believe that unless you go by Calvary
you havenlt preached, which isnlt so. All the Gospel is -- you
may not even mention Calvary. But the thrust of the Gospel is
doing good, being related to God, being related to each other,
and doing for each other and chiefly bettering your own life in
the sense that you let God do it through you. You canlt do it
yourself.
INTERVIEWER: Let me ask you a question of a white Baptist
minister whose name is Will Campbell.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I have heard of him. He was supposed to
have been a great preacher.
INTERVIEWER: He is an interesting preacher. I wouldnlt
necessarily call him great. He has written a book about his life
and growing up in rural Mississippi and going to Yale and
becoming a preacher and getting involved in Civil Rights.
Somebody asked him if he could sum up the Gospel in 25 words or
less. He came up with something. Let me ask you the same
question.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: If I could sum up the Gospel . . .
INTERVIEWER: In a couple of sentences?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I suspect I would sum it up by saying
that God started off being in creation. God is with us and he
has always been with man. But through Jesus Christ he can relate
himself directly. God is in us. God is around us. We should
not fear. People do. It is according to your degree of faith and
trust that you donlt. I donlt think many people trust God. Many
68
more people have a general bel ief about God but no specific trust
in God . Ours is a fearful generation .
INTERVIEWER: I want to move , before we quit today , and we may
just sort of begin t his and p i ck up with it next t i me.
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I want to come back to this one thing.
In the very first church I had pri ncipl es i ngrained in me that I
and I start ed out being straight in the pastorate and no t
contradicting what I t hought to be the thrust of the Gospel . It
took a challenge t o do that . But I have always been willing to do
that.
I NTERVIEWER: What about, you pastored at First Bapti st at Se l ma .
How d i d you come to be pastor there? And I know you ran into
some difficulty wi t h some deacons t here . Would you t ell me
somethi ng about that too . You can start with the beginning of
your
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: There are people who now can be friendly
toward you i f you are sayi ng good t hings wi th which they agree.
Especi al l y i f they have anythi ng to do with the running and
operati on [of the church]. Most Christians want to keep things
as they are . They a r en ' t g i ven to change . We talk about al l
l ife is change , but we aren ' t given to it. This church had a
steepl e that stood at least 75 or 80 feet in the air . It is t he
o l dest Black Bapt ist church in Dallas County . Some of the grea t
preachers of antiqui t y had passed through t hat church. C. H.
Hayes , some of the other preachers there. But the church had , as
the ages go, sort of atrophied . It was a great b i g bui lding. I
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had to put a roof on that building when I went there. They had a
metal tin roof, toilets on the outside where you pull a chain and
the water would flush the toilets. When you'd get off the toilet
you'd have to run off before you flushed or you would get wet.
So I had toilets put back in a couple floors from the ground. I
had the toilets put back in the basement. That was one of the
big battles I had. I think they had about 200 old aristocratic,
some nice people. I am not saying people can't be aristocratic
and good. But they were people who looked up -- for instance the
only pharmacy in that town at that time belonged to the First
Baptist Church. Some of the middle class people belonged there,
as opposed to Green Street where there was a massive church.
They didn't have many of the so-called "elite" in it. Some of
the better families of Selma had at one time been members of
First Baptist and Tabernacle [Baptist Church], Jemison's church.
When I went there things were dying out. They didn't have -­First
Baptist right now is bigger than that church over there.
I guess it is. You could get a seat anywhere. Of course, when I
started pastoring it, membership picked up and I always had a lot
of visitors come. I never thought that First Baptist was the
greatest pastorate I had. I just happened to be pastoring there
when I had the experience that most closely related me to the
Lord and that I could feel and understand Him actually doing
something when I needed it in a way that I could understand it
was He. Now I've had trouble and had to straighten out some
things in every church I've been to. So that it wouldn't be a
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great big thing to know that I have controversy anywhere because
I believe in being straight. J. D. Pritchard, Sunday School
superintendent, deacon and trustee, was a genteel man. He wasn't
an educated man but he was nice. He would get real close to you.
He called me F. L. When he would get mad he wouldn't say nothin'
to me. He sang in the choir. His wife sang in the choir.
Pritchard quit his wife and married another woman. Evidently he
had to. All of them sang in the choir. He quit this woman and
went back to his wife.
INTERVIEWER: Are they legally divorced?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Yeah. He was quite an impulsive person.
Nice-looking fellow, too. He had influence. He and Dr. Brown,
the only dentist there, and Ben Harris, who was the only Black
plumber in Selma. Ben was older than all of them. They were key
people in that church. All of the rest of them 78 or 79 people
there were just ordinary people. The decision makers were Ben,
Pritchard and Old Man Harris. You know I was gonna have a
problem when I worked for Ben Harris getting out under those
houses plumbing for $.50 an hour. He would never accept me as
his better. Pritchard was friendly. He would loan me money. He
would loan me $100.00, sign the note at the bank and I always
paid him back even before time. He was the kind of person, I
remember once we were having a meeting: "As many notes as I
signed for him." I said "Did you ever have to pay one of them
back?" Besides you sign a note to get "lowe me" and you weren't
suppose to do that anyway. I am supposed to speak what I think
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the Lord wants me to say. Not through you. They had, at some
time, before I got there, given that pastor a suit of clothes,
shoes, all that kind of stuff. They had gotten together and
maneuvered where the deacons and the pastor could do anything
they wanted without bringing it to the church. That is never so
in the Baptist church. The body has the authority. Even if they
vote something to be done by the pastor and deacons, the body has
the authority. And in the Baptist church, only the pastor is
over the entire congregation. You don't have to copastor with
the board. Of course , many white ministers do that. Some Black
ones, too. They had refined it even further when I got to First
Baptist, the chairman of the deacons board would preside over the
deacons board meeting and the pastor would preside over the
church meeting . When the Baptist church rules say that the
pastor is the presider over all including the deacons. So they
do everything. For a while I went along with it. But they would
do what they wanted to do first.
INTERVIEWER: Let me interrupt. They were already ensconced in
power in the church when you got there?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Almost like concrete. In fact they said
to me when I, Grimmett had left there Sunday, he had been
involved with some woman. She was a single woman. Grimmett was
married. He just went all out for this woman. His wife was a
homely looking woman, but a very nice person. I heard him say
once "He was going to get rid of that woman if it was the last
thing he did." He would -- they would make him mad he would get
72
up in the pulpit and say on Sunday morning -- I didn't know where
he was --and say "If anybody knows anything about me come up to
my face like a man and tell me." This was in church service.
INTERVIEWER: Was this the previous pastor?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: I guess they were getting on him or
saying things. John Frank Grimmett. He is at Nashville right
now teaching. Been teaching ever since he left here. So some
time he would have a fairly nice congregation. He was an
educated person. He was real articulate in his speech, while I
was just a country boy. By my going there with people, people
liked me so much, you understand, and whenever I got a chance to
preach, not trying to lecture or nothing. I just . it was my
gifts I guess. So I am at Everdale pastoring and Mt. Zion and
all of a sudden in October of about 1949, Grimmett leaves the
church. I went to church that Sunday and somebody else preached.
The deacons got together and came to see me after church and
said, "We want you to preach until we get ready to sit down and
get us a preacher." We are going to give you $10.00 which was
like $100.00 to me then. Old Ben Harris said you can move your
service back, people like you here and he even told me "We won't
be considering you as no pastor. But you can make $10.00" which
was fine. Before I went there they had just built a new
parsonage on First Avenue without getting bids for it. Ben just
put the gas in. So there was a lot of talk about Ben taking the
treasury money which caused all sorts of aggravations. The
parsonage was there empty on First Avenue. As an example of what
73
I am talking about their doing what they wanted to do, I was at a
meeting once and the grass was growing up around there -- tall,
over an acre of ground, an acre and a half, maybe two acres.
They didn't want to cut the grass. We were sitting in the
meeting. "Well, we didn't say we were going to cut it. I said,
"Well, who is supposed to cut it? You aren't telling me to get
out there and swing that grass cutter over an acre of ground?
I'll tell you what you do." "N-a-h, we will vote to pay it this
time, $10.00." I said, "N-a-h, they are suppose to cut the
grass. Don't vote to pay it this time. Cause I'm not gonna cut
it next time." This was after some time. I'd been there . . .
I found they were going to be devils regardless. But this shows
you the results of their doing what they wanted to do. So I
finally got to the point where I quit calling meetings every
month. We were in church one Sunday morning and Pritchard was
saying, "Well, its time to have a meeting." NO, I announced then
we were not going to have board meetings. I said, "We will not
have board meetings." Pritchard said, "Well, its time to have
it. " I said, "Well, it may be, but I just announced we wouldn't
have it. It is not necessary to have conflict, argumentation
every month." Of course they said "Well, its time and that's the
rule of the church." I said, "But you can't call a board
meeting can you? I just announced I wasn't gonna call for one."
"So what you gonna do?" "Well, this time I just say it won't be
here." I'll call it later. You asked me a question. This thing
had built up you understand. One of the things I guess that --
74
okay and some of the crux of the matter the deacons were doing
all right so long as they had the means to count the money and
put it in the bank. No problem if somebody had to go or this or
that, or even me, no problem. But they just wanted the privilege
of counting it, which was right. Well, the women, they would
collect money. Instead of turning it in with the names you
couldn't know -- so I just print whatever I had, and there was a
lot of conflict about that. Ben told me -- we were in a meeting,
we met regularly, "You know you ain't got no business . . "Why
you got to put that up on the board?" "Well, its their business
what you turn in isn't it?" I said "I know I told you we're
gonna print whatever you turn in. It's your record. If people
are going to see our name, they have a right to ask for it."
They thought I was letting people have too much to do with it.
Because any curb in their power meant that they could not make a
decision unilaterally. Any other preacher would just go on and
take what they do and be glad to be there. I didn't give a
tinker's darn about whether I was there anyway. Keep in the back
of your mind, however, that I had been working with Ben Harris as
a helper around them houses. He would hurt his finger and curse
and do everything. You must remember when I went there I built
the B. T. U. [Baptist Training Union] and I had built several
circles in different areas at the time. The church was really
growing. They could see these people having too much to do, too
much say. They were determined that it wasn't going to
wasn't any preacher gonna have any power there anyway. That
75
didn't bother me so much about that but it was the way they did
things. First of all I had gotten tired sitting in a chair and
let them do as they wanted to do. And if I am there I am
agreeing to it. Then I learned that Pritchard was a hypocrite.
I'd preach some time and he would shout allover the church, and
then he'd sit there and do nothing. So, I never mentioned it.
We finally fixed the bathrooms and put a roof on the church and
people were really moved. We changed the mission president to a
woman who was kinda testy. She didn't take too much. She would
say what she wanted to say. Her daughter was the BTU chairman
and had all these circles. And people liked me so much. I never
talked to one member about another -- against another. Even now.
I just pray for them. Even then not having gone through the
experience that I have had now, I never was nervous when it came
to saying the truth of whatever was on my mind. They were
determined that they weren't going to let this preacher run these
women and nobody would have power in that church. And it just
evolved that things had to be. It came down to tearing the old
toilets out and I said put them under the steps from where they
are now. You go under the steps and you go back under there and
you go to the toilet rather than being on the outside. I said,
"Okay, I want you to understand that I favor what Ben is doing,
even if it is more, but we ought to get bids on it. Just as
simple as that. Pritchard said "We don't need no bids. Let Ben
do it. We don't need no bids." I said, "That's not right, this
is a church. It ought to be more than just for what Brother
76
Harris says, although I favor this . " The conflict was that they
didn ' t need an estimate . Because they said so . I said , "Well ,
why don't we need an estimate?" "Well , we just don ' t need one ."
"But I said we ' re going to get one . It is my duty to say, as the
director of church affairs, so we will get an estimate. 1I Well,
they argued over that but insisted Ben would be on the committee
to get an estimate. You know yourself that there would be a
conflict. So I agreed to it ' cause I had no objection really to
Ben doing it. It had been said around (town] Ben and Grimmett had
run away with the church ; he had put the plumbing in the church,
he put the gas and electric in. The man might have been as
honest as anybody but what I wanted was for it to be fair. The
church had a right to fairness. It a l most got triggered by
Sister Bennett raising some money to go to Birmingham and the
women 's convention. They wanted them to turn the money in , which
was all right. Nora Bennett said to me "I'll turn it in if you
say so but otherwise I ain't. I said, "Well I think you should
turn it in." She said, "Well, I am going t o tell you right now.
These people are always talking about getting rid of you and this
and that." She said , "You're the only pastor that has been here
for years that lets us know anything about the business of a
church and that's what they are mad at you about. So you ' d
better let us he lp you straighten it out if you want us to ' cause
they don ' t think anything about you." I said , "Well , I don ' t
know. " I kept thinking about it. I said, "Well , let me think,
let me pray over it. 1I If I run into a problem now and can ' t get
77
an answer, I said , "Let me pray over i t. " So it so happened
that Pri tchard sent my good friend Stewart around there to tell
me "go a r ound there and tell F. L. to make them women turn that
money in. " He was trying t o avoi d the battle too. He was a
battler. I sent Stewart back and I said , "Wel l , te l l him, if I
can ' t make them turn in report s as board l eaders , I won ' t make
the women t urn the money in ." I t came up at the r i ght t i me when
I was trying to get an answer. I was mostly l eaning towards
havi ng her to turn the money i n. I wanted the women to turn
the i rs i n. I shoul dn ' t be maki ng them [the women] do something
when I can ' t make t hem [the Boar d members ] do anything. So ,
Pritchard was creating us a battl e . So then Si ster Bennett asked
me again , she sai d , "Do you want me to turn the money i n . " I
sai d , "No, j ust hold it." So they got mad as the devil about
that . I final l y had a boar d meeting and some of those fe l lows
who real l y knew I was r ight but they had been al l owing them to e
the spokesmen all of the time .
INTERVI EWER : Deacons?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: Deacons and trustees . We had t he
meeting and Pri tchard was the cheerleader. "We ain 't gonna have
no preacher running thi s church . No . We don ' t want no women
running it. We ' re gonna run it. " Almost a cheerleading secti on .
Fi nally one of the fellows who had been real with me and was up
against what t hey were saying wound up cursing the board . I
said , "Well , that does i t , I am ready to go home now. Now it
won ' t be this .. " Prit chard said, "Whatcha goi ng to do about
78
it?" I said, "If this is your level of re l igion, the church has
to decide whether they want me as a pastor or you . " "You better
get with us. " I said, "No , you get with me. " "You ' re a young
man . " I said, " I 'm a young man but I am still pastor of this
church and that ' s what you can ' t accept . " I was willi ng even
then to go , but I saw what was corning and couldn ' t be avoided.
So , Pritchard and I guess what really made me f i ghti ng mad, I
am challenged to do something -- I know I compromise - - and in
that meeting - - and then besides that, here's what really
I started off at $150.00 and now I am making $ 180.00 . So the
superi ntendent of the school gave me a job where I was making
$234.00 a month. They couldn't see that . "Yeah," they said,
"part t i me pastor, full time pay. " I said , "Whatcha gonna do
about it? Besides , what do you want me to do , baby sit you al l .
I can ' t teach you anything." So , one fellow named Danton, who
had long fingers, he was kind of a dull fellow but he was nice.
Tall , big feet , and he said to me in that meeting, "You are gonna
stop teaching , or else! " I sai d, "How did you say that? " He
sai d, "I said you ' re gonna stop teachi ng , or else. " I said , "You
just gave me my answer . " Dr. Grimes , Chairman of the Board , he
was just a nice fe llow -- he never did argue too much. He said ,
"You got that?" I said , "Yeah , I ' ll take the "e l se" whatever it
is . I am going to sit in the boat and you a l l rock it . If you
can sink the boat, then me and God wi l l go down together. They
said , "you better get with us." I sai d, "After thi s , you get
with me . I will not try to get with you all any more. Because
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you all are wrong. You will not have the authority to t ell all
the other folks what to do. You can recommend to them. Neither
will you have authority to tell me what to do and what not to do.
You can suggest. I said , "Now the only name on that sign up
there i s mine . If I say it 'is' it will take a vote of the
church to say it 'ain't', not you. I don't intend to harass you
but I am going to tell you like it is. You all have just gone
too far too long." "Yeah , under Thomas, we had that rule under
Thomas." We don't have to bring nothing to the church. And the
climax -- here i s the climax . They were fixin ' to build a
project right there around the church . . . . And First Baptist
had a lot that they had to sell. [And while] I was gone to the
convention, two or three of them got together, not the whole
board, and decided to sell the lot. Government was going to take
it anyhow. So Pritchard tells me when I got back, "Ah, F. L.,
(we hadn't been talking too much] the government's gonna take
that lot. Me and Brown and [name indistinguishable] and Ben got
together and that is what we decided." I sai d , "Who al l voted? "
"Well, just me and Brown and Ben." I said, "Can the three of you
sell the church property? " "Well, we couldn't do nothin' but
accept." I said, "It takes the church to accept it, not you."
"Well, why they got to . . (went off into . . . ) . " I said,
"They got to do it because its their property ." "Well, if you
don I t say nothin' about it." I said , "I'm not going to let it go
like this. The church has to make the decision." That was the
kind of a s ituation I had. So it was gathering and gathering
80
storm. It was during this time that we went to Oklahoma to a
meeting. I had gotten to where I couldn't hardly sit in a chair
-- just tense all the time. When I would go to bed at night it
looked like somebody just springing me. I waited on this train.
I think this is when I prayed real deep experience with God.
INTERVIEWER: Before you get to this, let me ask you a question.
How was Ruby feeling about all this turmoil in the church. Did
she worry about it too?
REVEREND SHUTTLESWORTH: We didn't talk too much about it. She
knew what was going on. I would just briefly talk to her. I
never did really ask her -- Ruby always saw me as a strong
person. She was with me. I told her a few people were talking
but just don't get your opinion into it. People say "You said."
So I was on this train at night. People joke and talk loud on
the train. I remember about 2:00 in the morning. Everybody had
gone to sleep. I couldn't go to sleep for nothing. I went and
sat down in a chair and tried to go to sleep. I got up and went
back between the cars where there is a section where you can
stick your head out. So I decided I would stick my head out and
look at what we were passing. It was very dark. I couldn't see
anything. I stuck my head out in the wind but the train was
going so fast it cut water out of your eyes and I had to get back
in. It was right there -- I think that was the time I really
prayed from the situation of actually needing God. It wasn't
because I was afraid. It was because I wanted to be sure I was
right and that He was with me. I said to Him, almost these
81
words, "Lord, I never asked you to send me to First Baptist." I
had two little churches. I was doing fine and all of a sudden ,
here I am. It looked like nothing was going right and I said "I
realize of all of your servants who really need your will had to
suffer. They had to actually suffer. All through the Old
Testament and the New. " I said to Him, "I'm willing to do that.
I am not asking you to relieve the suffering. But I am asking
you to fix me so I don't worry so much." While I was yet
standing back there, look like somebody just reach down and
lifted that whole train off me. The weight left. I knew
instantly what it was. I went back and sat down and went to
sleep just like that. It was the third time I tried. So I went
back horne to Selma. I had a little revival to do in Camden,
Alabama , which is 3